Tag: John Major

Madam Chairman, we’ve had a good week.

It’s been the week the Tory family came together – to renew the family contract with the British nation.

And through the week, colleague after colleague has set out fresh, detailed, new policy for the future.

There’ve been some marvellous speeches.

It’s been 21 years since Michael Heseltine first got a standing ovation at this conference. And no one has sat down since.

The well-being of our country is more important than any political party.

And the well-being of the Conservative Party is more important than any member of it.

So the lesson is clear. Everyone in the Conservative Party should work – and if I know them, will work – heart and soul, irrespective of personal interests, to secure the re-election of a Conservative Government.

Over the last two or three years there’s been attempt after attempt – by our opponents – to sully the reputation of our Party.

Well, I know this party.

No doubt it’s not perfect – nor is everyone in it.

But I grew up in it.

And that campaign won’t succeed.

Because this Party as a whole is straight and honourable and true and – like you – I’m proud to be a member of it.

Unlike Labour, we aren’t ashamed of our past.

Unlike Labour, we haven’t abandoned our principles.

Unlike Labour, we haven’t had to reinvent ourselves. We’re proud of what we’ve achieved.

Because, Madam Chairman, we’ve changed Britain – for the better.

 

ENTERPRISE CENTRE OF EUROPE

When I became Prime Minister, I set out to make Britain a low inflation economy.

I knew what a fight it would be.

But we went for it. We took the flak.

No weakening. Heads down. We did what we always do when we’re challenged: we came out fighting.

And, as a result, we’ve had the longest run of low inflation this country has seen for a generation.

I want to thank my colleagues – and you – my party – for standing with me through that battle. Between us, we’ve transformed the prospects for our country.

And we did it with raw political gut.

We set out to create jobs. And we’re succeeding.

Unemployment is lower here than in any comparable country in Europe.

In Britain it’s falling.

In Europe it’s not.

Last year, this year, and next year we’re set to have higher growth here, in our country, than any big country in Europe.

Curiously enough, the Labour leader didn’t mention these successes in his flight of fancy last week.

Pages missing perhaps?

He just said the country was falling apart.

Inflation down.

Mortgages down.

Unemployment down.

Some fall.

Of course, there was a time when this country was falling apart. It was when we had a Labour Government.

So I’ve got some friendly advice for Mr Blair. If you knock your country, you’ll never lead it.

The plain truth is I’m the first Prime Minister for generations who can say “We’re the most competitive economy in Europe”.

And I intend to be the Prime Minister who builds on that success after we’ve won the next General Election.

Madam Chairman, at that election there’s a central question. It’s this: who can be trusted with the future?

Labour try to persuade people it’s them.

“We’re different” they say. “We’ve changed our name”.

“Rely on us – you know we’ve always been wrong in the past”.

Well, that’s candid – if a touch eccentric.

Trouble is, they’re wrong in the present as well.

And it simply won’t do for Mr Blair to say, “Look, I’m not a Socialist anymore. Now, can I be Prime Minister please?”.

Sorry Tony. Job’s taken.

And anyway, it’s too big a task for your first real job.

Mr Blair’s handlers are trying to spread the tale that he’s a very fierce dog indeed. Indeed, but also that he’s quite harmless.

Another eccentric messages, “Fierce dog – no teeth!”.

By the way, have you noticed how the less a politician has to say, the more over-heated the language in which he says it?

When every aim becomes – “a crusade”.

Every hope – “a dream”.

Every priority – “a passion”.

Then it’s time to duck from cover.

And when the whole show is laced with words like “tragedy”, “catastrophe”, “triumph” and “destiny” – terms with real meaning, but which, ransacked for political advantage, degrade the message – then I think of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “the louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons”.

 

BELIEFS

Madam Chairman, I came into politics to open doors, not shut them.

They were opened for me.

I was born in the war.

My father was 66. My mother was – how shall I put it? Surprised.

We were like millions of others. Not well off, but comfortable, until financially the roof fell in.

Nothing special about that.

But for us, it changed our life.

My mother coped – as women do.

I left school at 16, because 5 pounds a week mattered.

I learnt something from that experience. In the game of life, we Tories should even up the rules.

Give people opportunity and choice, to open up an avenue of hope in their lives.

And by “people”, I don’t mean “some people”. I mean everyone.

Opportunity for all.

It’s in the bloodstream of our party.

It was Shaftesbury who gave an education to thousands of children from poor homes.

It was Disraeli who gave many working men the freedom to vote.

It was Salisbury who brought free education within the reach of almost every family in England.

All Tories.

And it was Margaret Thatcher – another Tory, as you may know, who sold council houses and public industries, giving people a real stake in this country.

Giving people opportunity marks the great divide in British politics.

In its heart, Old Labour, New Labour, any old Labour still believe that Government knows best.

I don’t.

But then, I’m a Conservative.

I believe we should give families opportunity and choice and a wider, warmer view of life.

Our belief in choice is the driving force of our policy – its not a political ploy; for me it’s the core of what I believe in.

 

EDUCATION

I start with education.

There are millions of children in our country. All unique. Everyone an original: different skills, different talents, different needs.

Should each child – with all his or her originality – be made to fit into a regimented education system?

Or should we design an education system to fit the originality of the child?

We of course we should.

So our task is to provide a rich choice of schools and colleges, giving the best to every child and demanding the best of every child.

And who should choose the right schools for those children?

The Government?

The bureaucrat in Whitehall?

The councillor in the Town Hall?

Or the parents, who love and care for those children?

Of course it’s the parents.

Wherever possible, they should choose.

We’re improving that choice every year.

And we intend to widen it further.

So, I make this promise:

If parents want more grant-maintained schools – they shall have them.

More specialist schools – we’ll provide them.

More selection – they’ll have it. Why should government say “no” if parents think it’s right for their children?

And if parents want grammar schools in every town – so do I, and they shall have them.

We grammar school boys – and girls, Gillian – believe in choice for parents.

That means parents shouldn’t face a choice between one bad school and another.

What kind of choice is that?

I’ll tell you.

It’s the kind of choice you get in Islington – unless you move out of the borough.

We’re going to change that. That’s why this autumn, as Gill Shepherd told you, we’ll turn today’s promises into tomorrow’s reality with a flagship Education Bill.

We want high standards in every school.

It’s why we set up the National Curriculum. It’s why we insist on tests.

Without tests, how can you know what a child hasn’t learned?

And how can parents be sure how well their children – of their school – are doing?

When we insisted on giving that information to parents, John Prescott called it “Political Propaganda”.

Just pause and think about that for a moment. It tells you a lot.

Information to parents about their children – and the Deputy Leader of New Labour calls it “Political Propaganda”.

Well, well. If education’s a passion for Labour, it’s a passion that dare not speak its results.

 

SPORT

While on education, I want to say a word about sport.

Firstly, well done England on Wednesday. More please.

And well done Scotland. I hear it was no effort at all. But you’d have won anyway.

Last year, at this conference, I told you of my determination to restore sport, and particularly team sport, to the heart of school life.

It’s natural and healthy for young people at school to have their sporting heroes and heroines: sportsmen and women whom they can choose as role models.

So with the enthusiastic help of the Sports Councils, I’m going to set up a team of Sporting Ambassadors – widely drawn from the best role models in sports, our leading athletes, past and present – who’ll visit schools and talk to pupils, teaching staff, school governors and parents, to enthuse and inspire and encourage.

To work up the scheme, I have asked that legendary England cricketer – that man for all seasons – Sir Colin Cowdrey – to chair a small committee whose members will be drawn from the elite of the sporting and academic worlds. Colin is here today and I want you to thank him for agreeing to do this.

His committee will announce their conclusions by Christmas, and I intend that the scheme will be up and running in schools in the coming academic year.

Colin scored nearly 8,000 runs for England. Now he’s going to inspire nearly 8 million boys and girls who might want to play, compete and represent their country.

I want them to enjoy sport. And they’ll enjoy it more if they play to win.

Take it from me – winning is fun.

 

THE FAMILY

There are those who believe in the self-before-everyone, grab-what-you-can school of thought. They may find opportunity for all an odd philosophy.

But it’s ours.

And for the last 17 years we’ve followed it.

We’ve cut direct tax, given more and more people the opportunity to save, to own shares, own pensions, own homes.

More than ever before, we’ve given families more independence and more freedom to choose.

As a result, millions have become owners of homes, savings, shares and pensions.

But not enough yet.

Madam Chairman, in our next 5 years, we will seek new opportunities: an opportunity owning democracy.

Helping more people save and build security for retirement.

Helping people who need care keep more of those savings.

We’re aiming for the least possible tax to give the greatest possible choice.

As we can afford it, we’ll move to a 20p basic rate for all. That’s our priority.

We know that cutting taxes isn’t government giving anything back to people.

It’s the government taking away less of people’s own money.

That’s why low taxes are right.

We don’t want to soak the tax payer.

Labour often say they want to soak the rich.

But they’re the only party in history who also regularly manage to soak the poor.

And sometimes no taxes are right. So, to encourage wealth creation for the future, we’ll reduce and then abolish Capital Gains Tax.

Many people in our country build up savings long after they’ve enough for their own needs.

One reason they do that is to pass on the fruits of their life’s work to their children and grandchildren.

This is a powerful, human emotion.

So, over time, our next target is to remove the burden of inheritance tax.

Building wealth for the many, not for the few.

 

WELFARE

People treasure independence. Their own independence. The State is the last option, not the first.

The more independence, the less reliance. The less reliance, the more we can help those in real need.

There are many demands we must meet.

Health – as science provides more treatment.

Social services – as we improve care.

We’ve always accepted this responsibility.

But as we accept responsibility, so must people themselves.

Dependency must be about needs, not culture.

I can’t stand the welfare cheats. I’ll tell you why. They deprive those in real need.

We’re determined that taxpayers’ money goes where it’s needed.

Our task is to build a welfare system for the 21st century.

A system for a self-help society – not a help-yourself society.

And one way of building independence is to get more people back to work.

We’re now doing that on a scale that’s the envy of Europe – partly because we refuse to make political gestures that cost jobs. That’s why I say “No” to the minimum wage and “No” to the Social Chapter.

The minimum wage is the wage of the dole queue.

It’s not a wage at all.

How can you talk of a Social Chapter that makes it more difficult for people to find work.

That’s why I say they’re no-go areas for jobs and no-go areas for us.

It’s business not government that creates jobs.

But government can help the unemployed.

Last year I announced our plans to develop a Contract For Work.

This week we Tories took a big step forward with the start of our new Job Seekers Allowance.

We don’t want to pay people to stay on the dole. We do want to help them get back into work.

So first we’re going to help those who’ve been out of work the longest. They’re the people for whom the barriers to opportunity are highest.

First, we give them help to find a job and if that doesn’t succeed, they’ll be offered work on a community project.

For many it’s just the motivation they need.

But it also shows up those who don’t want to work. I think that’s right.

So over the next year we’ll be extending the scheme to towns and cities across the country.

This is part of building a welfare system we can afford. One that goes with the grain of the British nation. Fair to those in need. And fair to those who pay the bills.

 

HEALTH

Madam Chairman, every year, someone writes to The Times to say he has heard the first cuckoo of spring.

And every year at the Labour conference, some cuckoo distorts out commitment to the National Health Service.

Listen.

Our NHS is unique.

In this country, when you’re ill, we take your temperature.

In other countries, they take your credit card. While I’m in Downing Street, that will never happen here.

That doesn’t mean that National Health Service shouldn’t change. It must. If it were fossilised, it would decline.

I saw that clearly the other day when Norma and I visited a doctor’s surgery – in Glossop actually.

The family doctor is the gateway to the Health Service. More people see their doctor than anyone else.

This was a fundholding practice – part of our reforms – and, in its own small way, an example of the quiet revolution of the NHS.

Waiting lists have been slashed.

People no longer has to trek to the district hospital.

More services were available. Osteopathy, acupuncture, Alexander technique, counselling, nursing, physiotherapy and occupational-therapy posts created. Community Care improved. More money spend on patients, not paperwork.

Tory policy working for the patient.

Now, this practice is one of the very best. But that excellent service could be the future everywhere.

Our task is to make it so.

And this autumn, Stephen Dorrell will introduce a Bill to do just that – giving family doctors greater freedom to develop local services in their surgeries – creating a new generation of cottage hospitals all over Britain.

And that’s only half of it. In the Autumn, Stephen will set out our ambitious plans to build the National Health Service for the 21st Century.

And Labour’s vision? Stuck in the past and stuck in the mud – as usual. They plan to end fundholding.

What ideological madness. Do you know what that would mean? I learnt in Glossop. It would mean that those new clinical posts, new nurses, new physiotherapists, the new occupational therapist – all these would go.

New Labour, no new services.

But, in the NHS we must always try to improve our services.

So, before the end of this year, we’ll unveil new plans to help mentally ill people followed by new plans to reform social care for children, disabled people and the elderly.

More practical Tory measures.

And looking a little further ahead, I still hear too many stories of politically correct absurdities that prevent children being adopted by loving couples who would give them a good home. If that is happening, we should stop it.

Madam Chairman, for over 17 years, through thick and thin, we Conservatives have found extra money for the NHS.

It’s become a habit.

So today, I give you a Health Service Guarantee.

Our Manifesto pledge that the NHS will get more, over and above inflation, year … on year … on year … on year … on year … through the next Conservative Government.

 

LAW AND ORDER

Earlier this week, Michael Howard set out our new plans to fight crime. But there’s two things I’d like to add.

Firstly, in a few weeks, we’ll published new plans to deal with younger offenders.

They’re a real problem.

We must spot school age children turning to crime and stop them in their tracks early on.

One theme of our plans will be to make them repair the hurt they’ve done. And we’ll have some new ideas.

But today, let me tell you of our plans for young tearaways who are out of control.

We only want them in institutions if it’s really necessary.

But if they don’t deserve that punishment – severe for young people – they mustn’t think they can offend and get away with it.

Over the last year, we’ve been testing an electronic way of tagging offenders so we can confine them to their homes, and know that that curfew is being kept.

It’s worked. We think it will work on younger offenders as well – so, we’ll try that too.

If we know a young trouble maker is out there, night after night, disturbing the peace and committing crimes, we’ll make sure the courts have the power to order him to stay put. At home – off the streets.

And the tag around his ankle – that can’t be removed – will raise the alert the moment he tries to go out.

If he can’t go out on Friday and Saturday nights with his mates it might cool him down a bit. If he can’t watch his football team on Saturday, let me say it plain. That’s his fault. Not mine, not yours, his. And it’s time the buck stopped where the responsibility lies. No-one will miss the hooligan on the terrace.

And he might just learn the lesson.

And that will help him – as well as us.

 

NORTHERN IRELAND

Earlier this week, the IRA once spat their hate at the British nation.

Many good people tell me I shouldn’t bother with Northern Ireland. “No votes in it” they say. Maybe not. But there are lives in it.

And that’s why I bother.

I don’t believe Northern Ireland will leave the United Kingdom, nor do I wish it to.

But I know that there can only be a peace in Northern Ireland if all its citizens – Catholic and Protestant alike – feel their traditions have a welcome place in the United Kingdom. And there will only be peace of mind if we remove the causes that have given rise to so much conflict.

This is a political task. Grindingly hard, I know. But that is what the multi-party talks are for.

Progress has been slow – painfully slow. But progress has been made. And there is no other show in town.

Bombs will not bring Sinn Fein into the talks.

All they mean is that Sinn Fein has slammed the door on themselves.

I applaud the way the Loyalists have maintained their ceasefire in the face of the IRA’s provocation. Their political leaders have gained in influence and standing as a result. I urge them to stand firm and not to throw away what they have achieved.

The IRA’s latest betrayal of Northern Ireland means the demand for decommissioning of illegal arms is justified even more clearly.

We must have decommissioning in parallel with the talks.

And so that there’s no hiding place for those arms, missiles and explosives, Paddy Mayhew will introduce legislation into Parliament this autumn to set out how they can be taken out of circulation.

I want those weapons off the street.

And I want to remove the false excuses peddled by the men of violence for keeping their weapons. Let us expose these men to the world for what they are.

I also want to make government in Northern Ireland more accountable and give MPs more responsibility. We have already given the Scottish and Welsh members greater ability to question Ministers.

This autumn, I shall do the same for Northern Ireland. MPs from there should be able to question the Ministers and scrutinise Government policies directly in the Grand Committee, meeting sometimes in Northern Ireland. I will consult the parties about how best to achieve that.

The IRA has always believed that Britain can be deflected by terrorism. They’ve always been wrong. And they’re wrong now.

No-one will take Sinn Fein seriously ever again until they show a serious commitment to end violence for good.

I believe in the politics of reason – backed by strong law enforcement. I know in the end it will prevail.

And I promise the people of Northern Ireland this;

For as long as there is a political breath in my body, I will fight for a secure way of life in Northern Ireland for a settlement fair to all.

 

EUROPE AND THE WIDER WORLD

Earlier this week, Ian Lang, Malcolm Rifkind and Ken Clarke set out exciting new possibilities for Britain as a global trading nation with interests around the world. Wonderful speeches, all of them.

We have links and influence on every continent.

We have given birth to a whole family of nations.

I never forget that as I contemplate our future role in Europe.

The sharpest element of the European debate is the possibility of a single European Currency.

We Conservatives are in grown-up politics. We know that where Britain’s national interest is at stake, Britain’s national voice must be heard.

Over recent days in articles, interviews and in this conference hall on Wednesday, I spelt out why we must play a full part in that debate.

Madam Chairman, Europe is changing. The only thing that is certain is that it won’t be the same in the future.

In a few years, Europe will have 26 or 27 members. They’ll be widely different. Many of them will never match the economic performance of the larger European nations.

So, how do we cope with this?

We believe Europe must become more flexible and responsive. That the only realistic future is a partnership of nations, not a United States of Europe.

But some of our partners do see the future of Europe as ever closer political as well as economic integration.

We don’t believe this is practical. Nor, to be frank, desirable.

It’s not the Europe we joined and it’s not a Europe we can accept.

This debate about the future direction of Europe is one of the most critical we have ever engaged in. We need to argue it fiercely but fairly.

Europe is at a watershed.

Britain is a great nation. Of course, we must be in Europe. But we are in Europe to help shape it – not to be shaped by it.

 

NATION

Madam Chairman, a buccaneering spirit, gritty resolve, give and take, a conviction that everyone is entitled to the same dignity, courtesy, and esteem because of what they are, not who they are.

These are some of the values we all share. That’s what makes us a nation. Down the centuries, they have moulded our democracy.

It’s not a concept of government copied across the world because it’s the oldest. It’s because it’s the best. We treasure it. That’s why we must hold on to it.

The Union. Parliament. Our voting system. It’s naive to think that radical change would be easy or risk-free.

And it’s revealing to look at Labour’s plans.

Their priority would be to gerrymander the British constitution.

They’ve avid for more parliaments, more assemblies, more regional assemblies.

Their policy in in chaos. On Scottish referenda, they change sides more often than a windscreen wiper.

What a message. “Vote Labour – for more politicians, more bureaucrats, more taxes, more regulations, more tampering, more meddling, more authoritarianism”.

If this is the New Gospel, give me the old religion.

In less than 1,000 days, Labour would vandalise nearly 1,000 years of British history.

Once again, they show their true colours.

Labour are the Party of the State. We are the Party of the Nation.

Introduction

Today is Friday the Thirteenth. Remember it. This is the day I’m going to tell you how we’ll win the next election.

And if anyone is superstitious they shouldn’t be.

This is Margaret Thatcher’s 70th birthday and she won three elections in a row.

So the omens are good.

Many happy returns to Maggie today, and it’ll be many happy returns for us at the Election.

We’ve won four and we’re going for five.

All elections are important.

But the next is a watershed.

Because whoever wins will inherit the strongest economy for decades.

We built that economy.

It wasn’t easy.

And I don’t know about you but I’m not in the mood to hand it over to Labour to wreck.

So, Mr Chairman, we’re going to mount the fight of our lives. And when the time comes, we’re going to deliver the win of our lives.

Leadership

But first a bit of housekeeping.

As you know, in June I resigned as Leader of our Party and called a leadership election.

I did so because speculation was drowning out everything we were trying to do.

How could you argue our case on the doorstep with that sort of thing going on?

Well of course, you couldn’t.

It had to end – whatever the risk.

I might have lost. If I had I would still have been at this Conference. Still offering my full support to the Party, I believe is best able to govern this country.

But I won.

And today, face to face, I’d like to thank you – for your support – when the going was rough.

Thank you, too, to my campaign team led so ably by Robert Cranborne.

And there’s someone else who has always been there when the stakes were high.

She’s here today too.

Of course – I mean Norma.

Labour

But, that was yesterday.

Today, we meet united, healed, renewed – and thirsting for the real fight : with Labour.

Last week the Labour leader predicted that we’d wave the Union Jack. Of course. This Party has never waved any other flag and we never will.

To win, Labour must persuade people this country is on its knees. Clapped out. Beaten up.

They shouldn’t find that too difficult. That’s the way it always is – under Labour.

But they know it isn’t true under the Conservatives. And the world knows it isn’t true.

The world knows the only way our country would match their deception would be if they were running it.

I don’t question Labour’s patriotism.

But is a funny patriotism to rubbish our achievements – how shall I put it? – before breakfast, before lunch, before tea and before dinner, and then get up and do it again before breakfast – on the Today programme.

I don’t doubt Labour’s good intentions : the road to hell is paved with them.

They say they want to help businesses – so they’ll clobber them with the Social Chapter.

They say they want to help the unemployed – so they’ll destroy jobs with a minimum wage.

They say they want to treat the unions fairly – so they’ll give them privileges even Michael Foot didn’t dream of in the 1970s.

I think Labour has been re-reading “1984” – the book that introduced “Doublethink”.

You remember – doublethink is the trick of holding two contradictory beliefs at the same tine – and accepting both.

It was the brain-child of another public school-educated Socialist. His name was George Orwell.

But actually it wasn’t. That was his pen name.

His real name – was Eric.

His surname?

You’ve guessed it. It was Blair.

Eric Blair.

He changed his name. I can’t say the same thing about my opposite number.

He’s changed everything else. His politics. His principles. His philosophy.

But – to the best of my belief – he hasn’t changed his name.

At least not when I got up to speak.

But he’s abandoned so much, so fast you never know.

The Liberal Democrats support all Labour’s nonsense.

But they’re neither here nor there.

Because as we saw the other day, they’re the only party in British political history that has had its entire battle plans wiped clean off the media – by a goldfish.

The Great Divide – Us Versus Them

Mr Chairman, around the world, people now believe Britain is winning.

But don’t let’s fool ourselves.

I’m looking to the future.

There’s still a lot to be done.

The new Millennium will bring longer, fuller lives.

Shifts in world power.

More and more competition.

Changes in technology, fast and furious.

And, even with growing wealth, new welfare problems.

That is the Millennium challenge. We have to respond to it.

Explain to people the opportunities within their reach. Tell them what can – and cannot be done – and what the price will be.

By telling them I mean really telling them. I don’t mean insulting them by trivialising issues for instant media consumption.

I believe the public will respond to the plain truth.

I believe they’re as sick as I am of politics by soundbite, by nudge and wink.

No wonder people are turned off politics. The way some politicians conduct the debate would disgrace a nursery.

There are only two ways to the future. Labour’s way. And there’s ours.

Scratch beneath Labour’s rhetoric and you see the reality. Prescott, Beckett, Blunkett, Dobson, Cook. They believe a socialist state can do it all.

If that were true the past 50 years would have been quite different. Cradle to grave socialism – I always thought that rather constrained way to go through life.

But the State can’t do it all – and, what’s more, the State shouldn’t do it all.

Beat Labour one more time, and we’ve beaten socialism for good.

Our way – the Conservative way – is very different.

We believe the Government should choose what Government should do – and do it better.

Beyond that we should help individuals shape their own future. Help them – but not nanny them.

Conservatism is choice.

Choice is liberty.

Blazon it on your mind.

We should offer choice whenever we can.

But there’s one thing in our Tory tradition that has inspired me, it’s our historic recognition that not everyone is thrusting and confident and fit. Many are not: and they deserve protection. With a Conservative Government they will always get it.

Individual rights will be defended.

Ownership will be encouraged.

And, above all, we will stand for – and will protect – one United Kingdom, unbroken and undivided.

The Enterprise Centre of Europe

We Tories often talk of business and the need for success.

It’s worth remembering why. It’s quite simple.

If business makes profit, it provides jobs and pays taxes.

And those people with jobs pay taxes too. Taxes pay for our teachers, our nurses and our public services.

So we must make business more successful.

We are in Europe – and rightly so. It’s the richest home market in the world.

Half of our trade goes there.

But half does not. And both halves are equally important.

That’s why Malcolm Rifkind will actively pursue the vision of Atlantic Free Trade – refreshing our vital links with the Americas.

If we’re to compete with America, Japan and the Pacific Basin, we must be the unrivalled Enterprise Centre of Europe.

Let spell out precisely what that means.

It means high spending and high taxes are no longer an option. The state spends too much of our national wealth. We must get that share below 40 per cent – and keep it there.

The state spends too much of our national wealth. We must get that share below 40 per cent – and keep it there.

If the State spends too much, it taxes too such.

In the recession, we had to put taxes up to protect the vulnerable.

Now the recession is over, as soon as prudent, we must get taxes down again.

And – be in no doubt – I don’t only mean income tax.

I mean the taxes that damage investment and stultify wealth creation. I mean inheritance tax. I mean capital gains tax.

We must cut them, and then – when affordable – we should abolish them.

We receive more investment into Britain than any other European Country.

This very day, the Queen will open Samsung’s massive new development in the North East.

Fujitsu, Daewoo, Nissan, Black and Decker, NBC, Siemens have all decided their future is here.

You don’t hear Labour talk of this.

Of course not. These companies didn’t invest in a socialist Britain.

They set up here because it’s a Conservative Britain.

And they’ll only be followed by others if we keep Britain Conservative.

Labour say they know how to run a market economy.

I asked Humphrey the cat about that.

I’ve the first time I’ve seen him move so fast.

It took all the resources of the Royal Army Medical College to get him over the shock.

Labour have stood in the way of everything we’ve done.

Where were they when we cut inflation?

When we faced down union power?

When we fed life back into the corpse of so many nationalised Industries?

Humphrey could answer the question. Humphrey knows. Like Macavity, Labour wasn’t there.

They were the advocates of the easy options and they opposed every tough decision we took.

Interest Rates up? Disgraceful, said Labour.

Interest Rates down? Not enough, said Labour.

Interest Rates the same? The Chancellor must act, says Labour.

Always, always, always the easy option.

So when they criticise us, just remind them of this.

If we’d followed their advice, we’d have been in Carey Street.

Unemployment has been coming down for two and a half years.

But it’s still far too high.

The best route to more jobs is more small businesses.

We are the Party of small business. When I was a small boy, my bread and butter was paid for by my father’s small business. He made garden ornaments 40 years ago and some fashionable people find that very funny.

I don’t.

I see the proud, stubborn, independent old man who ran that firm and taught me to love my country, fight for my own and spit in the eye of malign fate. I know the knockers and sneerers who may never have taken a risk in their comfortable lives aren’t fit to wipe the boots of the risk takers of Britain.

When my father’s business failed – because his health failed – I saw the price the small businessman may have to pay.

I know the sacrifice they make for the dreams they have.

They don’t know whether they’ll succeed.

But they work as hard as they can.

That’s why, as Ian Lang told you, we’ve set up the biggest consultation with business ever seen in this country – to find out what more we can credibly do to help then.

Frankly, Mr Chairman, I think they’re heroes.

Europe

I know one thing: we mustn’t pile burdens on business.

So let me say this to our friends and partners in Europe.

Don’t ask me to sign the Social Chapter. I won’t do it.

I don’t look for popularity abroad – I prefer to protect jobs right here.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m for Europe, not against it.

And I intend to argue for policies that will help it succeed. Pressure to stop arguing and go with the European consensus is strong. It’s difficult to set rational argument against the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth.

We must be sympathetic, but we must stand our corner.

We must ask our partners to understand our thinking and we must understand theirs.

Against the background of the traumas Europe suffered over the past 60 years – war, dictatorship, civil war, military occupation – it’s not surprising to me that they look towards European unity as a guarantor of political stability. Of their decision never to go to war with one another again.

Only twenty years ago, Greece, Spain and Portugal – new partners in Europe – were ruled by men in dark glasses and epaulettes.

Now these countries are secure in the European Union.

In a few years’ time – thanks in large part to British policy – they will be joined by Czechs, Poles, Hungarians and others, now liberated from Communist dictatorship.

They are knocking on the door to entry and we want to tie them in to the democratic family of Nations.

Because it’s in our British interest: a further guarantee that our children and grandchildren will never face the conflicts than cost the lives of so many of our fathers and grandfathers.

Unoccupied, undefeated, the war left Britain with a very different perspective from the rest of Europe.

If we want to persuade our partners that their policies for Europe are wrong – as I believe many of them to be – we must use our imagination to understand their feelings and their motives.

We entered Europe,

For prosperity.

For co-operation.

For a louder voice on that great Continent.

But we did not enter it for a new tier of Government.

We did not enter it for Socialism through the back door.

And we did not enter it for a federal Europe.

It wouldn’t work for us. Our partners must understand that it’s politically and constitutionally unacceptable.

But that’s what Labour would agree to and I believe they are profoundly wrong.

We will advance our arguments firmly and courteously in Britain and in Europe.

For Britain for Europe.

But underneath the rational argument we should not be misunderstood.

If others go federalist, Conservative Britain will not.

Welfare spending

Mr Chairman, providing quality care for those most in need is a strong part of the Tory tradition.

Shaftesbury and Disraeli were doing it when socialism was just a distant nightmare in most people’s minds.

We are proud of our free National Health Service. We have fought to make it the best in the world in the next century. We have put more resources into health. Not just once, but year after year. And we are modernising it, so that it remains the best in the world.

But, Mr Chairman, we are succeeding. People are living longer. And that success in health creates new challenges for our welfare system.

The easy way out is to load the bills onto future generations – issuing blank cheques for our children to pick up.

In other words, living on tick. I wasn’t brought up to do that. And I don’t think that it’s right for the country.

We have already done more than anywhere else in Europe to build up massive pension funds.

Butt because we live longer, we need to develop similar approaches to long term care – encourage new forms of savings, new kinds of insurance, more flexible use of pensions.

That’s the next step forward in our welfare system, and one we are examining right now.

We don’t have all the answers yet. But it is important that people know we’re addressing their long-term problems.

It’s a huge challenge but it’s one we can’t duck and one we must get right. And it’s one that will only be met by recognising the money we spend has first to be earned through an enterprise economy.

It’s a strong Tory tradition that you and I look after ourselves and our families before we turn to others to pay our bills.

That’s why we need to target our welfare spending on those who need it.

I don’t need anyone to tell me that the welfare system matters.

I know what it’s like when the money for the week runs out by Thursday.

But welfare should offer people a ladder back to the pride of self-reliance, not a trap for the poor.

That’s why we’re designing a welfare system for the twenty-first century.

Targeting benefits. Reforming pensions. And helping people from welfare back into work.

But not tolerating those on welfare who won’t work.

From next autumn, everyone who is unemployed will need to undertake a contract for work.

A contract that makes it absolutely clear that they have obligations to accept paid work when it is available.

Mr Chairman, we’ll continue to shape a welfare system that is generous to those in need. We can do no other.

But it must be one that also reflects the basic Tory instincts of rewarding prudence, thrift and family responsibility.

Education

Education affects not just careers, but people’s whole lives. That’s why, when I became Prime Minister, I put education at the top of my agenda.

I haven’t changed. But education has.

Since then we’ve introduced regular tests. Made school inspection more rigorous. Given parents more choice and information.

Today, three times as many young people become students as in 1979.

Last year I told this Conference that we would make nursery education available to all 4 year-olds.

We’re doing just that with vouchers: to put power and choice where it belongs: not in the hands of bureaucrats. But in the hands of parents.

Choice. Choice. Choice. And all opposed by Labour.

I still want to widen choice in education.

Some years ago, we set up the Assisted Places Scheme. It helps children from low income homes to go to our best private schools.

It’s been a great success.

But Labour hate it.

That’s true to form – they always claim to want to help people – but in return they demand that people know their place.

And in Labour’s view there is no place for children of low income families in private schools. So they want to abolish the scheme outright. Labour’s message to them is: no choice for the poor.

One of the schools that offers places to pupils on this scheme is in Edinburgh. It’s one of Scotland’s most famous private schools – Fettes.

Quite a lot of famous politicians went to Fettes including – Iain Macleod.

Iain Macleod was a One Nation Tory and wouldn’t he have been proud to see pupils of poor families at his old school – sent there by a One Nation Government.

So am I. So I’m going to give more children that opportunity.

We’re going to double the Assisted Places scheme.

But I want to widen choice still further.

So if parents want specialist schools, we should let them have them.

And if they want religious schools, we should let them have them too.

This isn’t a dogma. It isn’t elitist. It’s based on the belief that children are first and foremost the responsibility of parents: and they know what is best for their children.

We also want excellence in education, so I believe we should let good schools expand.

Bad schools should be closed.

Of course, closing bad schools means a row. But it’s the right row to have and Gillian Shephard is prepared to have it.

Not every child can benefit from the Assisted Places Scheme or private education.

Real choice will come when every state school offers the highest standards – when every state school prizes discipline, when every state school puts learning before political correctness. Gillian is going to work with every good head and teacher to deliver that.

Many parents believe they’ve found a way to higher standards already. They’ve chosen for their schools to become independent, self-governing schools: what we call grant maintained.

These schools are in the state sector. Run by the Head and the Governors. They get their money from government to spend as they think fit.

Their results have been outstanding.

That’s why I want to enable all schools to become grant-maintained.

But Labour want to destroy them – wipe out their freedoms and take away their budgets.

These schools became self-governing after a ballot of parents. Parents chose independence. Labour want to wreck then without a ballot. Labour hate independence.

So, parents at the next election – choice or no choice. That’s the choice.

VE/VJ Day

This year we have all remembered with gratitude the sacrifice our predecessors made for our forbears.

VE Day and VJ Day were very special.

Most of you would have attended some of the events or watched the remarkable television coverage.

I was there. I found it immensely moving.

The sense of pride was tangible.

But Mr Chairman, unlike others, I didn’t hear people on VJ Day shouting out party political propaganda.

For me, it was a day in which a free people paid tribute to those who kept them free.

Back in June you will remember the huge commemoration which took place in Hyde Park.

Let me tell you a story of that day.

At the entrance to one stand was an elderly man trying to get in.

He had no ticket – so the security guard was about to turn him away.

But luck would have it, a brigadier was passing by. Not any old brigadier, but one of the organisers of VE Day. He saw something pinned to the chest of this elderly man.

Not all of us would have known what it was. But the brigadier did.

It the highest award for gallantry in our armed forces: the Victoria Cross.

The elderly man was immediately given a seat of honour on the platform.

Later that day, I had the privilege of meeting him – and the other Victoria and George Cross holders.

I learned that they receive a small annual payment.

It was £100 a year. A figure set 40 years ago, before many years of inflation. It has never changed.

It seemed to me that, in this year of all years, it should be changed;

So to show that this country has not forgotten the bravest of the brave: it will be changed.

From August this year that payment will be uprated to its original value. It will increase from one hundred pounds a year to one thousand three hundred pounds a year.

Northern Ireland

In the last year, life has changed in Northern Ireland.

I want to make those changes permanent. To see the next generation there growing up in prosperity – and peace.

Patience, determination and fairness have carried us a long way.

No one has shown these qualities more consistently than Paddy Mayhew and Michael Ancram – Northern Ireland has been well served by them.

But we’re not there yet. There are still some who, in one breath, say they’ve given up violence for good – and in the next warn that it could return. It needn’t, and it won’t, unless they themselves pick up the gun.

But if it is to last, it must be a just peace. One that is fair to all sides.

And a peace that is constructed away from the shadow of the gun.

However long it takes, building this peace in this part of our United Kingdom will continue to stand at the top of our priorities.

Britain in the World

Mr Chairman, Britain has big interests in the world.

We are the only nation at the hub of the European Union, the Commonwealth, NATO and the United Nations. We are a nuclear power and a member of the Permanent Five of the Security Council.

Our armed forces are today serving in more than forty countries including Bosnia.

I sent troops there in 1992. Not everyone approved but I believe it was right.

They went to the Balkans for two reasons – to protect men, women and children from starvation, rape and genocide and to prevent a full scale war at the crossroads of Europe.

They have succeeded superbly – often at great risk to themselves. We can be proud of what they have achieved.

It now seems possible we may soon have an uneasy peace. I hope so.

But our role will not end there.

Help will be needed to monitor the peace and we will play our part in this.

International influence creates international obligations – and we will meet them.

The Constitution

Mr Chairman, we can only continue to be a big player abroad if we remain one United Kingdom at home.

We recognise that Scotland and Wales are Nations in their own right.

Of course, if they insist they could ultimately go their own way. We could not properly stop them.

At the moment there is a clamour for constitutional change as many see the Westminster Parliament as a long way away.

Some say we would be more popular if we bent to this clamour: if in Wales we set up Labour’s expensive talking shop, or in Scotland we said:

“OK. You want your own tax raising Parliament you can have it. Don’t blame us when it all goes wrong.”

But that is not our way.

We are the Conservative and Unionist Party.

I will not trade easy votes today for constitutional chaos tomorrow.

We are sensitive to people’s concerns in Scotland. So we are looking at more ways of giving people more say over decisions affecting their day to day lives.

But it’s my duty to warn of the effect of Labour’s plans for the constitution.

Labour are proposing changes to our Constitution for their own party political advantage.

In Scotland they are running scared of the SNP – so they have promised to impose a tax raising Parliament in their first year.

In Wales they are not so worried about Plaid Cymru so Wales would just get an Assembly.

And in England they can’t make up their minds so there they might – or might not – impose regional assemblies.

There is no demand for these in England. Labour only promise them in an attempt which fails to justify the over-representation of Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster.

It is a straightforward gerrymandering and we might as well say so.

In Scotland, the new Parliament would raise income taxes.

I hope Scotland realises what this means.

People in Scotland, uniquely, will pay higher income tax on the same income than people in England or Wales or Northern Ireland. To start with, a tartan tax of an extra 6 pounds a week for the average family.

Let me ask you a question: if you were a businessman, wanting to invest and create jobs, where would you invest: in Scotland, where you’ll have to pay higher wages to compensate for higher taxes, or somewhere else? You know the answer to that.

The Tartan Tax will do two things: it will pay for more bureaucrats and more politicians and it will begin the decline of Scottish prosperity. Neither of them are in the interests of Scotland.

All that is only the start. Conflict with the Westminster parliament would be inevitable.

And then – the siren voices of the separatists will foment mischief and demand an independent Scotland cut adrift from the UK.

These are not distant problems. These are Labour’s plans for the first year of a Labour government.

Mr Chairman, opinion polls tell us the Scottish people are not fond of the Government at the moment. But I’m fond of then and they are being deceived by Labour.

Labour’s plans are an immediate threat to Scotland and a threat to the United Kingdom.

We will continue to look for ways to improve the Government of Scotland. That is our duty.

But we will resist these damaging plans with all our strength. That too, is our duty, and the Conservative and Unionist Party will fulfil it.

Law and Order

Mr Chairman, as I go round. the country I talk to people about crime. What they want is to feel safe – at home and on the street.

In the past two and a half years, recorded crime has fallen.

Well and good. Now we must make sure that the fear of crime starts to fall, too.

People want crime reduced and criminals caught and convicted. And so do I.

So today, let me add to what Michael Howard told you yesterday.

We’re going to step up the fight against crime. To hit it harder and harder and harder.

Organised crime is big business on an international scale. And – at its centre – is drugs.

When I see the sheer evil of the drugs trade I am devoid of sympathy for the men around the world who run it.

They live lives of comfort, often of outward respectability, while they pour poison into the veins of millions.

Today, no parent, however safe and prosperous their home, can be entirely easy in their mind that their children won’t be offered drugs.

And that is true in some of our market towns as well as our big cities.

Two weeks ago, here in Blackpool, a 17 year-old died having taken drugs.

That boy’s whole future was snuffed out for profit.

Let me tell you what we shall do.

First, there can be no question of lifting our border controls. We are an island and we need them. Those controls are vital. They are not negotiable. And they are staying.

Secondly, our tradition has always been to have local police forces.

But local forces alone aren’t equipped for this sort of crime.

So for the first time ever, we’re discussing with the police the establishment of a national squad. This will have one mission: to take on organised crime in this country and break it.

The police will lead on this. They will have the support of the new National Criminal Intelligence Service, working with Customs, MI6 and GCHQ.

But all our available skills are not yet involved in this battle.

For many years the Security Service has protected us against espionage and terrorism.

But they can’t help the police because it is illegal for them to do so.

I think that’s absurd. And in an age when our children are more likely to be killed by a drug dealer than by an enemy missile, I think it’s indefensible.

So this autumn, we will change the law. It’s time to let the Security Service into the battle for the public and against organised crime.

Day by day, we are making more use of modern science against the criminal.

We are already using Closed Circuit Television in public places across the country.

This has been hugely successful. More cameras mean less crime.

So over the next three years we will add 10,000 more cameras in town centres, shopping malls and public places in every part of the country. They will improve security for the shopkeeper and safety for the shoppers.

But the most effective eyes are the policeman’s eyes.

I want to make every street safe.

Since 1979, we have recruited an extra 16,000 policemen – 500 in the last year

That’s helpful. But not enough.

I want to send an unmistakeable message to every criminal that there are going to be still more police on the streets.

So let us tell Chief Constables now so they can plan ahead.

So, Chief Constables, begin to plan. Because in the overall arithmetic of this year’s public expenditure settlement we have found the resources over the next three years to put, not 500 but an extra 5,000 police officers on the beat.

Mr Chairman, I said we intended to intensify the fight against crime – and I mean it.

Peroration

Mr Chairman, after four terms, why a fifth?

Because in a shifting world only we will build a safe future for our people and heal the scars of the past.

Because we are building a more secure economy as the enterprise centre of Europe.

Because we are reforming public service to make it more accountable to the public who pay for it.

Because we stand for choice and excellence in education, and in the midst of the biggest revolution since Rab Butler.

Because we will retain the old rock solid guarantee of the health service that care will be free at the point of delivery, and where improvement is necessary it won’t be treated as a sacred cow.

Because defence and security of the realm and the safety of our streets are paramount concerns of our Party.

We Conservatives are:

– for the individual, not the state

– for choice, not direction

– for ownership, not dependence

– for liberty, not control.

These are the enduring things, the cornerstones of our beliefs. We have worked for them, cared for them, fought for them.

We are building the greatest success for this nation that we have known in our lifetime.

We will not surrender them to a light-weight alternative.

We carry the scars of battle, yes, but they’re honourable scars. We know no other Party can win the battles for Britain that lie ahead.

So when you go home – refreshed and uplifted, I hope, by our Conference – remember these things, and ask the people on the doorstep:-

– Would taxes be higher or lower under Labour?

– Would Inflation be higher or lower under Labour?

– Would there be more or less choice under Labour?

– Would our defence be more secure under Labour?

You and I only have to ask the question to know the answer.

We stand for a wise and kindly way of life that is rooted in our history.

Our hopes from our country are not tired.

Our ambitions are not dimmed.

Our message to our fellow country men is clear. Millions have still to make up their minds.

The choice is theirs. Our Nation’s Future is at stake – and we stand ready to serve.

Mr. President, the political landscape has changed in the last few years, and it’s changed again in the last few months. The language of politics is now Conservative language. With every speech and every copied aspiration, the Labour Party finally admit how wrong they have been for so long, and how right we have been.

So forget the hype. It’s we who’ve changed the whole thrust of politics and moved it in our direction. We have won the battle of ideas, and it is an astonishing triumph.

When the Labour Party consider what has happened, they may realise what they’ve done, because what they’ve done is to study our instincts and our attitudes and then go away and market test them. And when they’ve done that they’ve discovered what we told them long ago: that they are the hopes and dreams of the typical Briton. It’s a huge compliment to this party and we should accept it gratefully.

But it’s one thing for the Labour Party to commit grand larceny on our language. It’s one thing for them to say what market research has told them that people would like to hear. But it’s quite another to deliver it. They have some hard questions to answer.

If you talk of full employment, then you should say what you mean. And then you should explain how that could possibly square with the minimum wage and the Social Chapter, which sound comforting but are deadly to jobs. And if you talk of low tax and low spending, does that mean supporting Tory tax cuts and Tory expenditure reductions? As to that we shall see before the writ of this parliament is run.

If you preach about community, then you shouldn’t grow politically fat on the politics of envy – and didn’t Blackpool reek of it last week? And if you’re going to attack over-mighty government and bureaucracy, then you shouldn’t promise Scottish and Welsh parliaments with more bureaucrats and more taxation.

And if you do, you should answer the question: Will Scottish Members of Parliament be permitted to vote on matters in England that English Members of Parliament would not be permitted to vote on in Scotland? And if Labour plan a Scottish Parliament, will they plan also to reduce the number of Scottish MPs in the House of Commons at Westminster, or will they gerrymander the Commons to boost their own political chances?

Mr. President, these are deep waters. So let Labour be the party of devolution. We are the party of Union, the party of the United Kingdom.

Mr. President, I’ve relished this debate. These are great issues, but they are our issues, this is our ground, and upon this there is a battle to be fought that this party will undoubtedly win. So I have this advice for you: don’t waste time on the past – it’s gone. Out there, up and down the country, people are concerned about the future, not the past. That is where the political debate should be, and that is where I intend to take it in the months and years ahead.

In politics, if you expect the unbelievable, then you’ll never be surprised. It is probable that at the next election, the government and the alternative government will both be talking Tory language. But there is a difference: only one will mean it. Buying Tory policies from Labour is like buying the Rolex on the street corner. It may bear the name, but you know that it isn’t real. Our task is to promote the real thing, and expose the counterfeit. We hear talk of a new Labour Party. A new Labour Party. These aren’t people without a past, lovable little extra-terrestrials beamed down for the duration.

Mr. President, since 1979, we’ve beaten the old Labour Party, the very old Labour Party, the redesigned Labour Party and the new model Labour Party. And as for this new, “biologically improved” Labour Party, it may wash blander, but I would give it a shelf life of under three years.

Mr. President, at Blackpool, Labour filched two of the principles on which we fought the last general election: opportunity and responsibility. But wasn’t it interesting that they left out two others: personal choice and private ownership. They’re vital to us.

So socialism may be a bit out in Islington just now, but Conservatism isn’t off my agenda. As they so often invent what we think, let me tell them clearly what we stand for: we believe in free markets, we believe in private ownership. It doesn’t go against the grain for us to say so. It’s not a new Conservatism that we’ve just discovered, it’s one of the oldest principles of our party and we believe in it passionately.

And because we’ve believed in it, millions of families up and down the land now have savings of their own: Granny bonds, TESSAs, PEPs, the hundreds of billions of pounds in the banks and building societies. It is our philosophy that has given people that choice and that security. That is the message that we must carry forward. Our opponents present ownership as if it was something selfish, self-centred, perhaps even greedy. Some people are all of these things, but most are not. People who have earned well, people who have saved, people who have inherited the fruits of a parent’s lifetime’s work are not the “undeserving rich”.

No, Mr. Brown, they are deserving workers. How does Clause IV put it – “by hand or by brain”. So let me hammer the point home ever more clearly: we are the party of savings, of ownership, of property, of personal independence. We offer people choice: the liberty to grow, and yes, the liberty to make their own mistakes. We admire success in life, and we will never, never, never resent it in other people.

We try to remove government from the everyday lives of people. We believe that every family should be entitled to enrich their own private corner of life, and then pass it on to their children without over-mighty taxation. That, Mr. President, is what Conservatism is about, and there is only one party in this land that truly believes it.

Mr. President, I know when people hear the word “economy”, the spirits droop. They think they’re in for a lecture on the PSBR, GDP, and all the rest of it. Well, you’re normally right, but not today. I just want to say today that the word “economy” should lift the spirits and not depress them, because the great cries of lasting growth with low inflation, which we have sought for the whole of my adult lifetime, is now within our grasp. Whisper it gently, but we are now doing well as a country.

For most people, it isn’t their everyday experience, not yet. But it will be, and I’ll tell you why. Britain is making more, selling more, exporting more. This time we have built a recovery to last, built on firm foundations, on export and investment. Month after month after month, exports from Britain have broken the record set the month before, and they did so again just last week.

These islands of ours are exporting cameras to Japan – you did hear me right, cameras to Japan; computers to Germany; cars to America; clothing to Hong Kong, and Cosmetics to France. We know what we were told. We were told unemployment would go on rising to five million. It’s been falling for the best part of two years, and Michael Portillo announced another fall earlier this week.

We were told we wouldn’t get interest rates down, but we have; that we couldn’t hit low inflation, but we have. These are the very things that bring security, make jobs safe, improve living standards and strengthen this country’s influence right across the world.

What is the prize that lies ahead? Let me tell you what it could be. In 1954, in Blackpool, “Rab” Butler was speaking to this conference. Suddenly he said something quite extraordinary. He said that living standards could double in this country in 25 years. People scoffed, but he was right. For the country as a whole they did double in 25 years.

So let us have the courage to look forward once again. If we are able to keep inflation down, as we must, and control public spending, as we must, what does that mean for our people? It means stronger growth, improving the services we care about – education, health, the police service; it means more money in people’s pockets and more free choice for those people.

Britain has changed. It may not have been noticed but it has changed. Not for 30 years has this economy grown so much faster than prices. So let us bang the drum and say so. It’s time to put the marker down, but as Ken Clarke told you yesterday, we need to stick at it, and for this reason neither Ken nor I, ever again, want to go through the boom-bust cycle that causes so much pain and so many lost hopes for so many people up and down this country.

And that is why in some ways we are a bit puritanical. That’s why we are so determined to control public spending, improve competitiveness, cut regulation, and let private enterprise build public wealth. That’s why we’ll be prudent about what we spend, cut taxes where we can, and above all build up the long-term health and strength of our industry and of our economy.

Mr. President, it’s time for this country to set our sights high again. What “Rab” Butler saw was prophetic and positive. Let me echo it today. Because of what has been achieved, with the right determination, with the right policies, we have the chance once again to double our living standards in the next 25 years, and that is something that everyone in this country can feel good about and feel good today.

Mr. President, I want to talk about education. How many people in this world are fulfilled, really fulfilled? How many do the jobs that they might do? How many have had their minds stretched and extended? “Not enough” is the answer. Not as many by hundreds of thousands as should have. That’s why education matters so much to me. I’m just burned enough to know a little about that. I left my chance late, so I did a lot of my schooling while off for a year with a shattered leg, in the company of Trollope, and Jane Austen, and Adam Smith, and a lot of dull but terribly useful books on banking. Better companions one never had, until now.

But I was lucky. Not everyone is. It’s my personal ambition that everyone should have the same chance to rise to the top on merit. Never mind where they come from, what their parents income is, what their religion is, or what their colour is. These are irrelevant, and please God they will always remain irrelevant to the people of this country. What matters to me is that they have the same chance.

Good schools can be a lifeline out of poverty, the ladder to a better life. That’s what our changes are all about: the curriculum, the testing, the league tables, the inspection, the new parental choice, the challenge to the old council school monopoly, the emphasis on better vocational education, and the creation of new universities. Mr. President, it is not reform for its’ own sake, it is reform to deliver higher standards for all our children.

Bad teaching fails children. They may get through if they come from families with a social edge, a sophisticated home and the good books that go with it, but bad schooling falls most heavily on pupils who have none of these things – children from homes without a book in the house, from blaring day-long television homes.

Mr. President, we are a national party, and these children are as much our responsibilities as are the higher climbers. If the school ladder’s all abstract theory and holds out no rungs of letters, facts and numbers, who loses? The children lose. The people who need our protection lose. The people easily defeated lose. The people who live at the bottom of the heap who deserve a chance to get off it lose, and it’s just plain wrong.

And that is why I want teaching in the weaker schools to be levered up, because if it is, someone will get off the bottom of the heap, and if it isn’t that is where they will stay, probably for the rest of their lives. I will never accept that. I’ve no time for those who are complacent and oppose improvement, and all too often they are the high priests of the politically correct.

They are the people who can afford the good things in life, who chortle away about our emphasis on basic standards and the three ‘R’s, and then move to a different catchment area, with better schools for their own children. They’re people who have in their own homes the books that they say other people’s children aren’t up to reading. They are the people I cannot take, the kind of people who have clambered up the ladder and then seem ever ready to kick it away from other people.

Education’s there to lift the eyes, broaden the horizon, distinguish between the great and the trite, the right and the wrong. It’s there to unlock the gate to a better life, and by and large teachers deliver this. They have a hell of a job, but they can make the difference for children between apathy and despair, and seeing the remote but inviting light upwards and out.

Teachers that do their work well, for heaven’s sake, teachers that do their work well, are the prime route out of the class trap. I care enough about teachers to give bad teachers a bad time, and I care about children enough to oppose sloppy, experimental teaching that ignores common sense.

Up and down the country, dedicated teachers have worked hard to put our reforms in place. They haven’t always liked every aspect of them; so we’ve listened. Sometimes they have been right and we have changed our minds. Many teachers feel there’s been too much paperwork. I agree with them, and there still is.

That’s why we’ve been working with them on slimming down the National Curriculum. We’ve now finished that job, and it’s been dramatically cut, and we’re now out to reduce much of the other paperwork that schools have to deal with. Teachers should be marking homework, they shouldn’t be doing it, and we’re determined that is how it will be. After the curriculum changes of recent years, teachers deserve stability, to be able to get on with their jobs without any more upheavals. So today I promise them this: there will be no further significant changes for the next five years.

And there’s another area in which we must give teachers our full support. I’m disturbed by some of the stories I hear – too many stories to ignore – about violent attacks on teachers and false allegations against them. The teachers’ unions are concerned about these issues and so are we. In this area, the unions deserve our support and the unions will get our support. But education involves fun as well as facts. Schools are friendlier, less forbidding places than once they used to be, and I think that’s good. But they seem to have lost something. I don’t regard sport, especially team sport, as a trivial add-on to education. It’s part of the British instinct, it’s part of our character. Sport is fun, and it deserves a proper place in the lives of all our children.

Of course it can’t supersede Maths and English, though how I longed for it to do so when I was at school! But it must take its proper place alongside them. We are therefore changing the National Curriculum to put competitive games back at the heart of school life. Sport will be played by children in every school, from five to sixteen, and more time must be devoted to team games. Many schools already offer at least two hours a week for sport and physical education. That should be the minimum, and I hope schools will offer more.

Schools should establish links with local clubs and national sports bodies to help do this. They must open up their facilities outside school hours, and harness the willing help that I know is out there. There are sports coaches, parents and other volunteers by the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds who will willingly come in outside school hours to help our youngsters have a better grounding in sport, and all it means, for the rest of their lives. So while we’re about it, I don’t want councils selling off school playing fields they may need. I want those playing fields kept, and I want those playing fields used.

Mr. President, there are many views about nursery education. My view is quite clear: I am in favour of it. The picture’s improving. Over half our three and four-year-olds go to nursery school. Nine out of ten have been to a playgroup or nursery school before they’re five. I think it’s time to accelerate this trend. So I’ve asked Gillian Shephard to work up proposals to provide places for all four-year-olds whose parents wish them to take it up.

This is a long-term proposal, but we intend that this new provision will begin to come on-stream during the lifetime of this parliament. This won’t be an easy exercise. We must consult parents and practitioners to get it right, because any additional publically-funded provision must be of high quality, it must promote diversity and parental choice, and it must be carefully targeted in a way that expands and does not crowd out the private and voluntary provision that we have at present.

Since we are making a lasting change to pre-school opportunities, we will have to phase in the introduction of this extra provision, but what I am doing today is giving you a cast-iron commitment that it will happen, and I’m giving you that commitment now so that Gill Shephard can start consulting on it next week.

Mr. President, I intend now to dispose of one of the most insidious lies in British politics. In life, some of our deepest convictions are formed by experience. Book-learning is vital, but life-learning runs deeper. When I was a boy, my father was elderly and sick, and my mother was frail. Their life wasn’t comfortable; they needed treatment regularly. They got it from the National Health Service. They had no money to pay, but they weren’t asked for any. I saw then, not only how well they were treated by the National Health Service, but the security of mind it gave them to know that it would always be available. I have never forgotten it.

Now let me tell you a later story. Two weeks ago when Boris Yeltsin was at Chequers, we went for a walk. There was some comment afterwards that I was using a walking-stick. Naturally if I was using a walking-stick there must be an ulterior motive – was this my bid for the rural vote? Well, no, actually. I was using a walking-stick because I injured my leg badly in a car accident thirty years ago. For a while, that many years ago, I thought I might use it. It was saved by treatment on the National Health Service. I have never forgotten that either.

Against that background, is it likely that I would damage the National Health Service or privatise it? Believing as I do that the greatest nightmare for millions is that one day, however prosperous they are today, that one day they may be old, sick, poor and uncared for, is it likely that I would take away from them the security of mind that was of such value to my parents? Mr. President, I can tell you, not while I live and breathe would I take that away.

Let me say something else about the Health Service: It is the National Health Service, it doesn’t belong to any one political party. The Labour Party, even today, take credit for setting up the NHS. I wouldn’t take that away from them – it’s one of the few bits of their past they don’t currently seem willing to repudiate. But who has been in government for most of the fifty years since the Health Service was established? We have. It is we, the Conservative Party, who have been in government for most of those fifty years. It is we, the Conservative Party, who have cherished the National Health Service, and built it up year after year after year after year. Mr. President, it’s our Service too.

But there is one difference between us and Labour. We don’t use it as a political football for party ends. Mr. President, we just build it up. I wonder how many of you know how many huge new hospital projects have been built since 1980 – you know, that period during which it’s said we have been running the National Health Service down? How many? None? Five? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? More than that? Surely not. In fact yes. The actual figure is over seven hundred big projects, each costing more than a million pounds and some of them many tens of millions for the one project.

And I’m not talking about car parks and offices, I’m talking about patient facilities – new hospitals, operating theatres, pharmacies, maternity units and the like – all within the National Health Service, seven hundred of them since 1980, and I saw the latest bulletin here today: a new day surgery unit in the Royal Bournemouth Hospital just down the road. But there’s more. Consider it, perhaps, as it is: one multi-million pound National Health Service project every eight days the Conservative Party have been in government, throughout its fifteen years. That’s not words, it’s reality, and go out and tell it because it’s our Service too. So I have a message for Labour’s Health Spokesman, “Junket” Blunkett.

Mr. President, when I became Prime Minister, I asked for a fresh look at the criminal justice system: the way we prevent crime, the way we police our streets, and the way we punish the criminal, and I did so because I felt that concern had shifted too much towards the criminal and too far from the victim. Why is there so much crime? The cheap, thought-free answer is to blame the so-called “acquisitive 80s”, but that’s just party political posturing; the roots are deeper than that. It is a long-term trend: sadly too many people feel less respect for their neighbours and for their neighbours property than once they did. And yes, I believe we have fostered too easy, too casual a response to crime by too great a tolerance of crime over many years.

There have been too many voices excusing crime, explaining crime, and justifying crime. We think that’s wrong. That’s why we’ve increased penalties for rape, violence against children, firearms offences, drug-related crime and crimes committed on bail. And so that we can not be said by our opponents to have ignored what our opponents call our “friends in the city”, let me say we have also increased sentences for financial crime.

For a whole range of crimes, then, we have toughened sentences, and judges are now using them. For the first time in years, a rising proportion of convicted criminals are being sent to prison. I take no pleasure in that, but everyone has the chance to stay within the law, and that is the point. If we are to change the climate against crime, then the offender and the offender’s chums must know they will not be able to swagger out of court, untouched, immune and boasting about getting off scot-free.

I believe such firmness is right, and I believe it is necessary. Prison should be decent, but it should be spartan. No-one wants to alienate and harden attitudes, but prison is there to punish and not to pander. I fear that is not always the case, and where it is not, Michael [Howard] and I are agreed, it will have to change. But don’t let us fool ourselves. Punishment alone will not do the trick. We have to change attitudes, improve policing, and support the innovative methods of Chief Constables. We are now developing much more targeted approaches to crime – new approaches; we’re investing in more effective crime prevention.

We must make streets safe for the law-abiding and dangerous for the criminal, and that is why we’re putting yet more money into closed-circuit television. It’s been a huge success, not only in big cities like Newcastle, but in smaller places like King’s Lynn as well. We’re going after drug dealers and drug trafficking, putting together the most comprehensive campaign against drug use ever launched in this country, and we will be announcing the details of this next week.

And we are putting modern science at the disposal of the police. As Michael Howard told you yesterday, we’re giving them wider powers to take DNA samples from people they suspect of crime, and that will help target sex offenders against women and children, and as a result help make this country just a little bit safer for millions and millions of people. The powers in the Criminal Justice Bill are needed, and I can tell conference this: we will never be deterred by the disgraceful riots like those we saw in London last weekend. And the sooner the Labour leadership disowns those Labour MPs involved in organising and speaking at this event, the sooner we may be prepared to take seriously some of their strictures on crime.

And I can tell you how I feel about that episode: I think there’s something profoundly sick with people who organise a demonstration which turns into a riot, and then criticize and attack the police who are only there to protect the public from the results of that riot. Mr. President, we hear enough bad news about crime. Let me tell you some good news. In Manchester crime fell by 12% in the last year; by 12% too in my own county of Cambridgeshire; in North Wales by 10%. What does that tell us? Not to relax, never. It doesn’t tell us to be complacent. But it does tell us we can fight back successfully. If you can target burglary and cut it in London and Warwickshire then you can do it elsewhere. Mr. President, it will take a national effort to beat crime, it will take time, and it must involve everyone, but we are determined to succeed and we have made a beginning.

Many of the changes I’ve been talking about have come about in the last year or so, and I believe that people who have spent that time criticising my good colleague Michael Howard would have been far better off supporting him during that year.

Mr. President, a generation ago it was said that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role. It may or may not have been true then, but it surely isn’t true today, because economically and militarily Britain remains in the top league – a member of the permanent five of the United Nations, a leading member of NATO, of the European Union, and of a Commonwealth that covers one-third of all the people on earth, a member of the Group of Seven of the worlds’ most powerful economies and one of only five significant nuclear powers in the world, and we have too as a priceless asset, perhaps the finest professional armed forces anywhere.

That is Britain today, stripped of the masking-tape so often placed above it. So let’s recognise what we are, look with confidence at the new world, and go out and put our own distinctive British mark on it. The changes taking place around the world are truly awesome. I’m not sentimental about them – I know how fragile they are. Two months ago I was in Warsaw, where the first bombs fell in 1939, fifty years on from the heroic uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. It was good to be there. That August evening, we met in a free Poland, whose President was Lech Walesa, a shipyard worker who helped to change history. And taking his hand in friendship were the leaders of a democratic Russia and a united Germany. Poland’s past enemies were there as friends; hope had flowered and the world had changed.

A month later I flew to Berlin, where allied forces were leaving after half a century. That day, our troops marched away from Berlin with that professionalism and that patience which is the special preserve of the British soldier. For nearly fifty years, they had stood guard for peace and freedom at the gates of Berlin; now they were no longer needed; the world had changed. Three weeks ago, I was in South Africa. When Harold Macmillan spoke there of the “wind of change”, it was to an all-white audience and a South Africa that was soon to leave the Commonwealth. But I spoke to a parliament freely elected by all South Africans, and that great country is back in the Commonwealth, back where it belongs.

And what a tribute that is, to the statesmanship and the vision of Nelson Mandela and F.W. De Klerk. Finally, Mr. President, I flew from South Africa back to Chequers. There Boris Yeltzin was my guest, and the President of Russia and the British Prime Minister shared a country house weekend, a walk in the English countryside, and a pint of beer in a British pub. Four snapshots of change, historic days, when the impossible becomes not just possible but an everyday reality. Now the cold war is over, but while the threat was there, there were appeasers and accomodaters in plenty – but not in our party. We can say it with pride: We never heard their voices in this hall.

As in the past, so in the future. Whatever uncertainties may lie ahead, this nation can trust that instinct for security that is a defining characteristic of the Conservative Party. Mr. President, the challenge now is to catch the tide of events that have flown in recent years so very strongly in our favour, to draw the nations of eastern Europe – historic, vivid nation states: Poland, Hungary, the Czech lands, and others – back into the European camera, to make democratic Russia an ally and not a threat, to help the democracies in the third world escape the excessive debt that cripples their development – and time after time it has been British initiatives that have led the way in achieving this, to use our age-old links with Africa to help prepare that troubled continent for a better future.

These are historic roles; historic roles for which Britain and the Conservative Party are marked out by history and by experience. We will use that experience. We will use it also to carve out the right position for Britain in the right sort of Europe. There are extraordinary enthusiasms – hopes, fears, apprehensions – on both sides of the European argument, but I made our general position clear with my speech at Leiden. I believe it carries with it the overwhelming majority of this country, and that is the basis on which I will negotiate in 1996.

And if I am not satisfied, I will do as I have done in the past: I will just say “No” to changes that will harm Britain. But I hope I will be able to secure an agreement that we can accept, for that is in the best interests of Britain. Across the world, the last four years have been turbulent. The years ahead may well be turbulent as well. We will be cautious, pragmatic and safe, but the world remains uncertain and unstable. If anything the end of the cold war has made regional wars more likely and not less likely. We cannot safely assume that it will be a safe world. Only this week we have seen how quickly a crisis can blow up in the Middle East, but who better to send there and act for Britain than Douglas Hurd, our own Foreign Secretary.

Mr. President, we have interests the world over. Isolationism is a luxury that Britain cannot afford, and there is a growing need for regional peace deals – we are very good at them; the defence of British interests does not always lie on British soil. So we will continue to play a leading role, as we have always done, through the United Nations.

Mr. President, the main point’s clear: while we have Conservative government, Britain will have a sure and stable defence, the best equipment, the best weapons, the best trained troops that we are able to provide. Last week showed again how distinctive that position of ours truly is. In opposition it doesn’t matter that Labour voted to scrap Trident – in Government it would. In opposition it doesn’t matter that the first place Labour would look for cuts would be another defence review – in Government it would.

So let me mark out the clear ground, so that no-one serving our country in uniform is in any doubt. Three months ago, we confirmed our frontline would have an extra three thousand troops, and placed five thousand million pounds worth of orders and tenders for modern and effective equipment for the army, the navy and the air force. That, Mr. President, made implicit what I will now make explicit: the big upheavals in our armed forces are over. They deserve the best from us and they will get it.

Let me say something about Northern Ireland, and the momentous events through which we are living. For the past 25 years, Northern Ireland has faced the daily horror of murder and brutality, kneecapping and beatings, organised racketeering and viciousness to fund terrorism for political ends. No morning has dawned that might not contain an atrocity: a father who didn’t return home, a woman or child indiscriminately bombed, a policeman or soldier killed by a hidden sniper. That evil has spread, from time to time, to mainland Britain: the Brighton Bomb, ten years ago this very day, that some of you will be remembering so vividly and so painfully. We still miss those who were lost and think of those who were injured. It was intended to murder a cabinet, but it ended up hardening the resolve of an indomitable Prime Minister.

We remember the murders of Airey Neave and of Ian Gow, the bombs in the city and at Downing Street, the agony of Warrington, and the heart-rending memories of Tim Parry and Jonathan Ball who will never know the future that should have been theirs. What did those two little boys ever know of political disputes? In all this time, these long twenty-five years, the extraordinary people of Northern Ireland have carried on with their lives. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. All the people of Northern Ireland need to know that a search for a solution to their problems is right at the top of the British government’s agenda, and I solemnly give them that promise.

We have made progress. It was the Downing Street Declaration that set out the principles that will continue to guide us. It helped isolate the IRA and push them to their ceasefire. As Jim Molyneaux put it, “It was significant”, he said, “when the IRA started to murder pensioners, children, mothers and fathers and so it was bound to be significant when they stopped. The most significant part of all has been the victory of ordinary people over the terrorists”, and how right Jim Molyneaux was.

And yesterday, yesterday the loyalist paramilitaries announced that they too were stopping violence. Another victory for ordinary people, brave people, in Northern Ireland. Today, for the first time in a quarter of a century, the people of Ulster have woken up to peace. Our determination must be to make that peace permanent. To fasten down what is unfolding needs clear reasoning and cold calculation. Many people will urge me to hurry. I understand their enthusiasm. I will not tarry one day longer than I judge is necessary. But I will take it in my own time. The responsibility for Northern Ireland is the responsibility of the British Government.

I am used to being urged to hurry. I have had such advice daily since the Downing Street declaration. But if I had listened, we would not today where we are, with the guns stilled and the bombs stopped and Northern Ireland on its way to a better future. So other people can call for speed if they wish, but I must ask the hard questions and I must make the right judgements at the right time, and to the best of my ability, I will. Things are changing; the profile of street security has lessened on military advice, men and women are no longer searched when they enter hotels and large stores; but let me give this assurance: for as long as is necessary, as many policemen and troops as are necessary will stay on duty in Northern Ireland to protect all the people of Northern Ireland.

We have made a beginning, but not yet an end. Every day that violence is absent brings more hope. Progress may not be easy, there will be setbacks, there may be disappointments – people who are suspicious, who block progress. All this probably lies ahead. But there is, I am sure, a way through. If you will something, you can make it happen, and the will for peace in Northern Ireland is very strong. So Paddy Mayhew and his team, who have done so well, will press ahead with the political talks with the constitutional parties. We intend to complete a framework document with the Irish Government.

We hope to restore local accountability and local democracy to Northern Ireland; to seek an agreement, an agreement that is acceptable to the people of Northern Ireland, and we shall test their view in a referendum as a cast-iron safeguard of our intentions. I know the size of the task ahead. I’ve no illusions about its difficulty, or the past record of many of the people with whom we are dealing. But we cannot let history freeze us into inaction. There is a chance, a window for peace. We will enter it if we can do so with honour and with consent.

In the words of the old testament, which is common to both traditions in Northern Ireland, “There is a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace.” The people of Northern Ireland are sick of war. It is for them that we must build a time of peace.

Mr. President, it’s a cliche’ today that every leader must have “the vision thing”. We’re told he must map out, in dramatic form, new direction. I don’t disparage “the vision thing”, but alongside “the vision thing” I must tell you I remain rather attached to “the action thing”, to “the practical thing”, to the “how on earth do you deliver these promises thing”. By all means listen to a politician when he tells you what he plans, but ask him too “How will you do it?”. Take it from me, the devil, the very devil, can be in the detail.

I don’t disparage the mapping of direction, or sometimes, new direction. I hope I’ve sketched out some today, but I must tell you, there is sometimes merit in the old direction. Change for the sake of change should never appeal to any Conservative. In a world sometimes of bewildering change, this party must stand for continuity and stability, for home and for health. And we must build this for the long term, for our children and for our grand-children. It is the young people out there, it is they who will make the world in which we grow old. They will make the decisions. They may decide in their time to strike out along new pathways, but it is for us in our time to build for them a stronger foundation so they may have that choice.

And today my message to you is that Britain is growing stronger: we are beginning to see the fruit of all the things we’ve battled and striven for throughout these difficult last four years. You know, running the country isn’t like walking down the road. You have to hold fast to your core beliefs, whatever the short-term pressures may be; see the right things through to their finish, whatever the risks may be. To govern is to be engaged in a hundred themes, a thousand roots, and the everyday visions, sometimes conflicting, of literally millions upon millions of people. No windy rhetoric, no facile phrases, no pious cliche’, no shallow simplification, no mock-honest, mock-familiar adman speak, can conceal or should be permitted to conceal the infinite complexity of government.

Take care nobody tries to conceal that from you. Take care not to confuse travesty with truth. Never assume that because an idea is easily communicated that it must be right. Take care not to confuse oratory with practical concern. Look for the achievements of government not always in bold plans or crude conflicts, but sometimes in mended fences too, and sometimes in the accretion of small steps whose pattern takes time to become clear.

In this difficult world, our interests are daily at stake. The time is ripe for grown-up politics. The glib phrases, the soundbites, the ritual conflicts, all these may be the daily stuff of life for the upper 1,000 in politics, but to fifty million other people in this country they are utterly irrelevant and my interests must be with them.

It is said that actions speak louder than words. I hope so, for in the end, and when it comes to a choice I shall bend my energies always to work, not talk. My trade has never been in adjectives; I shall be patient. I shall be realistic. I shall ask for patience and realism in others, and I promise you this: I shall put my trust in results. Thank you.

Madam President, as I walked through the Winter Gardens during Conference Week, I passed the bookstalls and what do I see, I see memoirs, memoirs to the left of me, memoirs to the right of me, memoirs in front of me, volley, volley and thunder. Madam President, let me say right away I’m not about to write my memoirs, not for a long time.

There’s a job to be done, a job of service to this nation and I believe in service. There’s a job to be done, a job I was elected to do and I propose to go on doing it. Madam President, there’s one aspect of the memoirs that I may write in future that you needn’t wait for – I can tell you now, straight away, precisely what I think of my Cabinet.

Do you think any of them look worried? Apprehensive? Touch concerned? They needn’t be, they’re a first-class team, they’re steady under fire, they’re united and they’re serving Britain superbly.

And isn’t it good to see Michael back?

Did you see those exercises? I dare say they’re going to enliven quite a few Cabinet meetings in the future.

Madam President, I’ve been coming to this conference on an off for about 30 years. It’s a very great event in the political calendar, but it’s something else as well. It’s a family gathering and like all families, from time to time, we have our squabbles. So today, before I turn to other matters, I want to say something to you, specifically as leader of the Conservative party. Our party has served our country in Government more often and better than any other democratic political party in the world. We’ve done so because we’re the broadest based political party this country has ever seen. Our support comes from all classes, all income groups and all parts of the United Kingdom. Madam President, I know our party. It can bear many things – unpopularity, deep controversy, setbacks – we’ve seen it all before, but there’s one thing that demoralises our workers and that breaks apart our support in the country and that is disunity.

We’ve always known where it leads, and so, in this private gathering we have today, we might as well state it plainly. Disunity leads to opposition. Not just opposition in Westminster, but in the European Parliament and in town halls and county halls up and down this country. Of course we won’t agree on every single aspect of policy. No one expects that. We’re a democratic party with a whole range of lively ideas. But I think you’ll agree with me upon this – people look to us for commonsense and for competence and we have a responsibility to you and to the people who put us in Parliament to show those qualities day after day. And that means we have to have our agreements in public and our disagreements in private.

And if agreement is impossible, and sometimes on great issues it is difficult, if not impossible, then I believe I have the right, as leader of this party, to hear of that disagreement in private and not on television, in interviews, outside the House of Commons.

Madam President, the last year has shown how hard every part of our party can fight for what it believes in. Let the next year show that we can channel all that energy together in a common effort against our opponents and for the policies we care about.

This week, an unusual week, this week we had two conferences for the price of one. First, there’s the one we’ve been at.

And then there’s the one we read about.

You know, I’m not absolutely sure that everyone’s caught up completely with the current mood of our party, so I’m going to ask you three questions and I want to hear the answers loud and clear so that no one can doubt where you stand. They’ve very simple questions and very straightforward.

Aren’t you fed up with people running our country down?

Aren’t you fed up with people writing our party off?

When people ask, “Will the Conservatives win next time?”, what do you say?

I didn’t quite catch that.

Yes. Yes. And yes again. And you don’t need shorthand to get that down.

You see, Madam President, this is a family gathering, just as I said. But now I want to reach out a little further to speak not just to you, but to those outside this hall who may be listening. I want to share some thoughts with you and see if they strike a chord with your own experience. I think that many people, particularly those of you who are older, see things around you in the streets and on your television screens which are profoundly disturbing. We live in a world that sometimes seems to be changing too fast for comfort. Old certainties crumbling. Traditional values falling away. People are bewildered. Week after week, month after month, they see a tax on the very pillars of our society – the Church, the law, even the Monarchy, as if 41 years of dedicated service was not enough. And people ask, “Where’s it going? Why has it happened?”. And above all, “How can we stop it?”.

Let me tell you what I believe. For two generations, too many people have been belittling the things that made this country. We’ve allowed things to happen that we should never have tolerated. We have listened too often and too long to people whose ideas are light years away from common sense.

In housing, in the ’50s and ’60s, we pulled down the terraces, destroyed whole communities and replaced them with tower blocks and we built walkways that have become rat runs for muggers. That was the fashionable opinion, fashionable but wrong. In our schools we did away with traditional subjects – grammar, spelling, tables – and also with the old ways of teaching them. Fashionable, but wrong. Some said the family was out of date, far better rely on the council and social workers than family and friends. I passionately believe that was wrong.

Others told us that every criminal needed treatment, not punishment. Criminal behaviour was society’s fault, not the individual’s. Fashionable, but wrong, wrong, wrong.

Madam President, on all these things, received opinion with the wisdom of hindsight, received opinion was wrong. And now, we must have the courage to stand up and say so and I believe that millions and millions of people are longing to hear it.

Do you know, the truth is, much as things have changed on the surface, underneath we’re still the same people. The old values – neighbourliness, decency, courtesy – they’re still alive, they’re still the best of Britain. They haven’t changed, and yet somehow people feel embarrassed by them. Madam President, we shouldn’t be. It is time to return to those old core values, time to get back to basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting a responsibility for yourself and your family and not shuffling off on other people and the state.

Madam President, I believe that what this country needs is not less Conservatism, it’s more Conservatism of the traditional kind that made us join this party.

This week, this week we’ve made a start. Now we must see it through. It’s time for this party to return to its roots. Madam President, our economic roots are clear. We’re the party of Adam Smiths, not John Smith.

And Adam Smith was the apostle of free markets and that is why we regard the present world trade talks as so important. At meeting after meeting, we have battled to keep those trade talks alive against difficulty after difficulty, because nothing will do more for growth, nothing will do more for jobs, nothing will do more for confidence in our future than agreement in those trade talks. But if other governments don’t play their part, if they hold back, if they won’t face up to their domestic difficulties, then those talks could collapse and the dangers of that happening are devastating. They could unlock protectionism, poverty and unemployment on a scale that we have not seen since the 1930s. A great deal is at stake. And because a great deal is at stake, I don’t believe we ought to be mealy-mouthed about the dangers. Today, on this issue, is not a time for holding back. So let me say to some of our European colleagues, “You’re playing with fire”. Or, to put it more bluntly, “Get your tractors off our lawn”.

People accuse us – accuse us – people accuse us of being the business party. Well, you bet we are. We’re for small business and we’re for large business. We’re for more business, not less business. When business booms, Britain booms, so we’re for private enterprise and we’re proud of it.

Over the last three years, the whole country has sweated and slogged and suffered to turn this economy around. Now, steadily, it’s happening. Recovery is under way. That’s the message from British business. The economy’s growing. You may not see it yet, but it clearly is growing and it will show. And as the economy grows, the family budget will follow, so people have every reason to begin to start feeling better again. Inflation’s down. Interest rates are down. Exports are up. Productivity’s up. Retail sales are up. Manufacturing output is up. And the number of people in work is up. Madam President, it’s the opportunity cocktail we’ve been wanting for years and it gives this country a head start on prosperity for the rest of this decade.

So, let’s try and build up that confidence, instead of forever seeing it knocked down. Why don’t we try something different? Why don’t we tell people about Britain’s successes? And let me tell you about them, in the strictest confidence…

… so they’re sure to leak out.

Who says we can’t make things in this country? Manufacturing industry is one of our great national assets.

Three weeks ago – sometimes it seems longer – three weeks ago I was in Japan, the industrial wonder of the world, and there with me were British manufacturers, selling solutions to problems that Japan hadn’t solved. Successful British firms, international leaders in their own fields, firms at the leading edge of technology, selling successfully to the world technology leader. Two days later, I was in Malaysia, and we came back with £1 billion worth of orders for British companies. They didn’t buy British to do our companies a favour. They did it because we made what they wanted and we made it better in this country than anyone else in the world.

Fourteen years ago, Britain was going nowhere. Now it’s going everywhere and selling everywhere. We’re making goods, making profits, making waves, right across the world. But despite that, despite the growth we’ve had there and the growth to come there, I must warn you, it’s still going to be tough and everyone in business here today, or everyone who listens to what I say today, knows how hard they have to compete. At present, Europe, our biggest market, is stuck deep in recession. It’s held back by social costs it can’t afford. It’s losing markets to Japan and to America and to the Pacific Basin. And that, Madam President, that, amongst other reasons, is why I refuse to accept the Social Chapter. It’s not a chapter of rights, it’s a charter for unemployment and we don’t want it here.

What we do want is more of our best brains going into manufacturing industry. Let’s see them give politics, the City, journalism a miss and go into manufacturing industry where their skills can be so badly needed.

And let’s see our great manufacturing centres humming with activity as we move towards the millennium. Let’s turn British inventions into British industries, British factories and British jobs. Let them make pounds for us, not dollars, marks, and yen for other people. Ministers are told, whenever they go abroad, part of your job these days is to open the door for British business. We’re backing exports with cheaper credit, more Government muscle and a new breed of diplomat – people who know as much about exports as they do about etiquette.

At home, at home we’re taking the ridiculous burden of red tape off business and off citizen alike. And I can tell you, in the next session of Parliament, there will be a big deregulation bill to show how seriously we take that.

Here’s a good old British maxim you can all remember: if the price is right and the goods are good enough, then sell abroad and buy at home. That’s the way to make sure that British industry continues to boom.

But there are other things we need to do for industry. Industry isn’t asking us for handouts and special help. It’s asking us, as the Government to play our part in creating the right economic environment for industry to let loose its own energies and compete on a level basis with the rest of the world. So here, Madam President, is another ambitious target for our country: not months but years and years and years of sustained growth without the curse of inflation. That is at the heart of our economic policy for the 90s. It’s a prize for which British Governments have struggled for 30 odd years and yet now, it’s within reach and we are not going to throw it away.

Just remember, only three years ago, inflation was over 10%. Now it’s under 2% and it must be kept low. Inflation is in check but it’s never in checkmate. Back in the 70s, soaring prices destroyed savings. We all remember that. We all want to make sure it never happens again. But to do that, to make sure it never happens again and destroys businesses and livelihoods and savings, sometimes we may have to hold back our ambitions for tax and spending.

Madam President, let me get one thing entirely clear. Our views on tax are different from those of the other parties. What the Conservative Party is aiming for is a Government that lives within its income and without your income. Other parties tax because they want to. We tax only because we have to. So come rain or shine, taxes will always be lower under us than any other kind of government.

But success has another vital ingredient, getting public finances back under control. At the moment, largely because of the recession with the great collapse in come than that created, we have a huge gap between what Britain spends and the tax we take in. We have to narrow that gap. It is true – Government has spent more over the last two years. We had to help the weak and protect the vulnerable through the recession. And that, Madam President, is an important part of Conservatism as well.

But now Britain’s recovering so we have to cut the deficit. We all agree on that but it’s no good agreeing on the principle unless you take the action and it’s no use people urging us to take the action unless they are prepared to back us when we have taken it for it may often be difficult.

There are tough choices ahead and we must make them and we will make them because it is in the interest of our country to make them and we have that responsibility.

Of course, people’s opinions will differ. Some say tax more, some say tax less, some say spend more, some spend less but stay out of my backyard. All that’s perfectly okay for the opposition but it won’t do for the Government party. We can’t have a lobby against every difficult decision. Decisions are what government is for and we have to take them.

So, once the debate is over, once Ken Clarke has announced out budget proposals, we Conservatives must work together and take that message to every single part of the country. But there is one thing I can tell you that you can take with it: high income tax is no part of this party’s programme.

It never has been and, as far as I’m concerned, it never will be.

Madam President, high on every Conservative list is raising standards in our schools. That’s why John Patten’s first concern is with what parents think and what our children need. There are tens of thousands of excellent teachers up and down the country and I’m proud to pay tribute to all they do on behalf of our children. But there is bad teaching as well and many parents and many pupils know that only too well. Our children must be taught what they need to know. That’s why we need a national curriculum. It’s why we need national testing. Not just for the sake of it but to find out what our children have learnt and what they have failed to learn. And when we know what they’ve failed to learn, we can put it right. But without those testing, we fail those children because we never learn what they haven’t understood at an early stage in their school career.

The principle of tests is not negotiable. We don’t need reams and reams of complex papers that take hours for teachers to handle. What we do need is those simple pencil and paper tests that this party has always asked for and that is what John Patten is going to deliver for us. Because unless we teach a child to read, to write and to add up, then we hobble that child for the rest of his life. Take John Prescott. For the audience at Brighton last week, his speech was a religious experience, mainly because it passes all understanding.

But push him to one side. I saw a letter recently from over 500 university teachers of English. And they say in their letter that it’s disastrous and harmful to teach standard English, great literature and Shakespeare in our schools. Apparently, teaching Shakespeare threatens to reduce a living language to a dead one. They say – and believe it or not, this is a quite – they say, “It would do serious damage to the moral and social development of our children and to the cultural life of society as a whole and all who are concerned with such matters should oppose in the strongest possible terms.” What claptrap!

Well, I’ll answer them in words, perhaps, they might approve of. Me and my party ain’t going take what them on the Left says is okay, right.

Madam President, over the past few months, in meetings with party workers – many of them I think will be here today – I’ve made it clear in private that the attack on crime would be the centrepiece of next year’s legislation. On Wednesday, after one of the best conference debates I have ever heard, Michael Howard delivered the first instalment. Lord Archer, if I may call him that…., made it clear how much we’ll have the support of the whole country in that programme. But don’t let’s pretend that we’ve been idle over the last 14 years; we haven’t. We’ve increased sentences, built more prisons, spent more, recruited more police, and those police have served us magnificently. And no other party would have done as much.

But we know now, it was not enough. In many parts of the country, crime figures have risen remorselessly. Crimes once confined to the cities have spread out into the rural areas, bringing alarm where alarm was never before. And that is the reason for our new approach. We have tried being understanding. We have tried persuasion. Madam President, it hasn’t worked.

I know criminals are a problem in a cell but they’re much more of a problem on the street. And policy must be dictated by the needs of justice, not by the number of prison places we happen to have available on any given day. If someone belongs in prison, when that is where they should be and that’s why we’re building more prisons. Better the guilty behind bars than the innocent penned in at home.

Let me tell you how I see things. We need tougher rules on bail and no bail for the worst offenders. An end to the right to silence, as Michael Howard announced earlier this week. And more information for the police from DNA testing. We’re going to use science to help catch the criminal and not let silence protect the criminal.

Here too it’s back to basics. For some, punishment seems to be a dirty word. Well, you’ll find it in my dictionary and I strongly suspect that it’s in yours.

Some time ago, I said we should condemn a little more and understand a little less. And I meant that for this reason; if we let young people at an early age think crime is a normal part of growing up, if we let them off with a caution, a caution and a caution, it is small wonder if they feel there is no peer pressure turning them to law and order, and they turn to bigger crime later.

And if we extend those parameters of leniency so far, we betray our children, for we do not give them the values that we expect them to live up to when they become an adult part of our society.

There’s one other issue in the range of measures that Michael announced in his remarkable speech the other day that didn’t find room for it, for there was, even for the Home Secretary, a limited amount of time at this conference. But it’s an issue upon which I feel very strongly and I can tell you today that we plan a big crackdown on the loathsome trade in pornography that offends so many people in this country.

There will be new powers of arrest and search, new powers to seize videos and other material, and – something I personally particularly support – a new offence to make the possession of child pornography a crime that can lead to imprisonment.

Yes, Madam President, it’s tough. And so it should be. There’s no place in a civilised society for that sort of exploitation of our children.

But don’t let us delude ourselves. Fighting crime is not just a matter for the police or for the Government. We can legislate, we can provide the resources. We can do all that and the police can perform miracles on the resources they have. But Governments can’t make people good. That is for parents, for churches, for schools, for every single citizen.

Like many people in this hall today, as a boy I knew people who had nothing, who expected nothing. They didn’t commit crime because they did have something. They had values, dignity, pride, respect for their neighbours, and, above all, respect of the old.

And in the long-term battle against crime, that respect needs building every bit as much as Michael Howard’s new prisons. Madam President, let me make it clear beyond a doubt. I simply do not accept that crime can be excused and under this Government, I give you my word, it never will be.

Madam President, from the serious to the less serious: our opponents. Our opponents can’t string two policies together but they can cook up a scare. And of course there’s a ready market for scares. Every day I’m told what I think that I don’t think, what I’ve done that I haven’t done, what I’m planning that I’m not planning. Hearing the news day after day is a voyage of discovery for me.

Voyage of discovery for me, but very unsettling for many others, many of them elderly, more of them, not very rich, and most of them very worried. So let me offer some reassurance, not rumour, fact. Next time Labour and the Liberals say we’re going to charge for visits to the doctor, you can tell them confidently, “No, we won’t”.

Next time they say we’re going to charge for stays in hospitals, tell them, “No, we’re not”.

And when they say we’re going to introduce prescription charges for pensioners, you can get right out on the doorsteps and tell them, “No, we’re not”.

They say we’re going to force older people to go to the bank, not the post office, to collect their pensions. Well, really. I have 500 square miles of Huntingdonshire in my constituency and heaven knows how many rural post offices. I know their value to local village life. I know their value to the community. I know how much pensioners rely on them and that’s why I promise you they’ll be able to go on picking up their pensions at the post office.

So go out and knock all that nonsense on the head. And yes, I know the concerns – nobody could possibly have missed them – the concerns that people have about their fuel bills. They believe they’re going to face massive rises. They aren’t. And the most vulnerable fear they’re going to be left without compensation. They aren’t. Kenneth Clarke made that clear yesterday and I’m happy to repeat it today.

This nation owes a huge debt to its pensioners. it’s something this Conservative Party will never forget. So, it’s our duty to keep our country a place in which they feel both safe and secure.

So when you hear people saying this, that or the other, don’t always swallow it wholesale. Remember, in the immortal words of Sporting Life in Porgy and Bess, “It ain’t necessarily so”.

Madam President, scares take me naturally to the Labour Party. I’m not going to be savage about Labour, I think the people of this country would welcome an end to the bad-mouthing between politicians.

So, as a man damned every Sunday for his moderation, I think I shall stick to my own civil instincts. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a bit of fun. Did you hear John Smith’s speech last week? He’s a good man, is John, but Lord doesn’t he go on about it?

He rather reminds me of a Scottish Buddha, the very essence of immobility with a faint smile of perfect self-contentment upon his face. And the Buddha has watched his Shadow Chancellor, Gordon Brown, Labour’s gift to melancholia, he’s watched him run from not sure about taxes, to no more taxes, to lots and lots more taxes in just six weeks, and there’s a long time before the next election. And the Buddha said nothing. The Buddha has left his Northern Ireland spokesman say, “Stop tests, cover up school results and scrap A Levels”, and what did he say? The Buddha said nothing. One hears that the only sign the Buddha ever gives is a slight shake of the head… if anyone proposes a new idea.

Madam President, we saw something rather remarkable in Brighton last week. They called it a “famous victory”. Famous victory? I would call it John Smith’s political Munich. Here it is, composite – I beg his pardon, composite 55 and 56. Let me read you the victory roll – the trade unions will now only make 70% of policy and choose on third of the leader.

Which one third is unclear. Perhaps they don’t think it matters. After all, they’ve long had the bit above the neck.

What we have out of last week is a minor reduction in union influence in the Labour Party and the promises of a huge increase in union power in Britain, if there was a Labour Government. One small step for the Buddha, one giant step leap for the brudders.

Whatever the trade unions ask for, they got. And they asked for was unconditional surrender. Remember what Mr Smith said, “The country needs strong unions today, as never before”. Madam President, after all we fought for over the last 14 years, I think this conference would beg to differ with that judgment.

Madam President, there’s another strange party in British politics. It gives a different answer to the same question in Cornwall or London, in Ryedale or Eastbourne, on Monday or Tuesday. They’re against VAT on fuel in the morning, and for a carbon tax in the afternoon. But they are consistent about two things, the first of them is tax. They are the other high tax party – income tax, local income tax, carbon tax, regional tax, Scottish tax, Welsh tax, and given half a chance, Euro tax as well. If they thought it would raise money, they’re produce revenue from syntax and tin tacks.

And the second thing they’re consistent about is federalism. Centralism in Europe. The Liberal Party is a federal party. Don’t take my word for it, this is their conference agenda – “The autumn”, it says, “the autumn conference of the federal party” – that is the Liberals in their own words. And look what they called for in this conference for a federal Europe – turn to page 99, though I would not recommend to you pages 1 to 98….

This is what they called for on page 99. They called for sensible application of the social protocol and they had an amendment – “delete sensible” was the amendment.

I agree. Sensible stands out like a sore thumb in every Liberal conference. But their leaders are fanatics for federalism. They have been out of government for so long, they have forgotten how to take decisions. The only decision they can take is that they want someone else to take the decisions for us in this country.

Next June, we will have European elections in Britain. Let me say to all our candidates who are present, and everyone here who will work in that campaign, that will be a national campaign. We are going to fight those elections on a clear and distinct British Conservative manifesto for the future of Europe.

Madam President, I have risked and sacrificed more than most for what I passionately believe in, a strong Britain playing a leading role in a strong and growing Europe, a wider Europe, a free trade Europe, a less intrusive Europe, our vision of an independent confident Britain, giving leadership with our partners in the European Community. And in our elections, in this country, next year, we will be the only mainstream party that is not prepared to move towards a centralised Europe and take that message to every doorstep in the country.

And tell them this too, tell them that any vote against us, for whatever party – Labour, Liberal, makes no difference – any vote against us for whatever party would be seen in every capital in the Community as a signal that the British people want a centralised Europe. We know they don’t. You know they don’t. They know they don’t. We must make sure the people of Britain vote to show the rest of Europe that we don’t.

The Liberal leader says, rather nervously I thought, that the guns are turning on him. Too right they are, and not before time. Let the Liberals loose and the prospect of a federal Europe could be a reality again. In this country, they are federalism’s fifth column. Away with them next June in the elections.

Madam President, before I leave the Liberal leader, I want to say a word about his posturing on Bosnia. I find it distasteful. No, no words suffice for the sheer dreadfulness of Bosnia.

The violence that has torn apart what used to be Yugoslavia has deep and bloody roots. They go back to the Middle Ages and beyond. People there have suffered great wrongs and unimaginable cruelties. We have given, as we always will, help, food, medicine, technical aid. We have sent British troops with humanitarian aid; the first country to do so. And those troops have saved literally hundreds of thousands of lives, men, women, children who would be dead from cold and starvation, are still alive, thanks to the activities, the skill and the bravery of those troops we sent to Bosnia.

Madam President, right at the start of this war, I said that I was not prepared to put British troops into combat to hold the various sides apart. It’s my responsibility, my responsibility as the Queen’s first minister, to advise when soldiers should be sent to fight and to risk being killed. It’s all very well to call from the sidelines for a huge military commitment to Bosnia but I listen with respect to the views of the senior professional soldiers and airmen. They know the depth of the problem. They know what we would be asking their men to do. They know that while the threat of air strikes is a good deterrent, you cannot finally settle a guerilla war by bombing. They know that. We saw it in Iraq after the biggest Armada of bombing for week after week after week. it was not until we sent in ground troops that Saddam Hussein finally lost. And those senior servicemen warn me against trying to separate three sides, three sides that hate each other, in a cruel civil war, in some of the wildest hill and forest country in Europe.

There is another form of intervention, which we may have to contemplate. Intervention, not to impose a settlement on parties at war, but to implement a negotiated peace. Right now, alas, the peace prospects are thin and speculative. Too speculative to risk the life of a private in the Cheshires or the Prince of Wales’ Own. The negotiators will go on trying. I earnestly hope they will succeed, but I shall not ask a British private to risk leaving his mother without a son his wife without a husband unless there is a real settlement.

Unless there is a real will by the people of Bosnia to stop fighting, not some ploy to suck outsiders in and then start the war again. I have never been in doubt about Bosnia. Though one cannot always speak one’s mind plainly, I have understood that to intervene is to risk an intolerable number of British dead. A war is easily started. The boys are always going to be back for Christmas, but wars, particularly wars in the Balkans, have other ideas.

So, let me make clear. I leave the talk of a quick away-day outing for the commandoes with everything sorted out in a couple of weeks to the commentators, and to the royal corps of columnists. Yugoslavia is tragic. I consider all the options but I must think first of the lives of British soldiers.

And I will not put them at risk for the sake of talking big and striking attitudes. I will not rush into war.

Emotion says yes, logic says no. I say no.

Madam President, an unstable Yugoslavia is one thing. An unstable Russia would be quite another. So, let me say a few words about the events of the past week. We should be under no illusions about the real motives of the rebels in the Russian Parliament. They were out for blood, the blood of democrats and reformers and, had they won, the consequences for Russian and for the rest of the world would not have borne thinking about. Yesterday morning, Boris Yeltsin told me that the courts would now deal with his opponents. Madam President, that is not how they wanted to deal with him.

The Russian people have twice voted for President Yeltsin and for reform. Now he plans further election, free elections, not rigged Communist elections. He invited me, yesterday, to send British observers to ensure those elections were fair. I agreed and promised that we would certainly do so. Those elections in December will be the surest test that democratic reform remains on track. We backed Boris Yeltsin against the 1991 coup. We were the first to do so. We backed him last weekend and I promise you this, we shall go on backing reform in Russia in the months ahead.

When we speak of the threat of violence, there is one other place that is never far from our minds. Each day, every day this week, whilst we’ve been gathered here in Blackpool, thousands of young men and women risk their lives in the Army and in the security services in Northern Ireland. They stand in the defence of democracy and of the rule of law. Under a Conservative Government, they will continue to have all the support that they need.

Northern Ireland is part of our democracy. We are not going to bargain away the people’s democratic rights, or any part of them, in order to appease those who seek to rule by bullet or by bomb.

Do to do, to do so, would betray the people, and, in particular, those of every party, many of them brave, who take a part in constitutional politics in Northern Ireland. So, no Government that I lead will negotiate with those who perpetrate or those who support the use of violence.

There is only one message for them to send. We have finished with violence for good. Madam President, we are and we will remain the Conservative and Unionist Party.

At the heart of our philosophy is an abiding belief in the right of the people of Northern Ireland to determine their own future. Unlike the Labour Party, we are not in the business of securing the break-up of the United Kingdom.

For us, the union and all it means is immensely important. In all parts of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland, the union has the decisive support of those who live there. So, I give this assurance to the brave and resilient people of Northern Ireland, for our part, we will always back your democratic wishes.

Madam President, before I sit down, I want to congratulate all of you in the hall, all of you who are the backbone and the strength of our party, for your cool, your warmth and yes, your resilience during a remarkable and, how shall I put it, most diverting week in Blackpool.

Throughout the 1980s, the political energy of this country came from the Conservatives. That energy must go on through the 90s and not only go on, but grow and develop, driven not just by those in Government but by you who work on our behalf for our philosophy, for our party, in each and every part of the United Kingdom. And if you feel, as I do, refreshed and recharged by our work in Blackpool this week, then go home and help us restore the fortunes of our party, through hard work and a passionate belief that what we Conservatives stand for is more true, more deep, more enduring, more in touch with the basic instincts of the nation we love, than all the words of all the other political parties rolled together. We stand for self-reliance, for decency and for respect for others, for wages that stay in the pay packet and don’t drain away in tax. We stand for money that keeps its value, for a country united around those old, commonsense British values that should never have been pushed aside.

The message from this conference is clear and simple, we must go back to basics. We want our children to be taught the best, our public services to give the best, our British industry to be the best and the Conservative Party will lead the country back to those basic rights across the board. Sound money, free trade, traditional teaching, respect for the family and respect for the law. And above all, we will lead a new campaign to defeat the cancer that is crime.

Carry out that message. Reach out, not only to those who already think as we do but to all those with no special party allegiance who care for what we care for and who love this country as we do, for the same reasons we do. Do that. The fight goes on, the waverers will return and yes, a fifth victory will be ours.

And one final word. Thank you, thank for for something that has been quite fantastic, your loyalty to this party and your loyalty to me.

Well it hasn’t exactly been a dull week has it? What we have seen has been democracy in action. And this Party is stronger and healthier for it.

Mr President, someone – I forget who it was – said that nothing that’s good is ever easy. I’m beginning to know what they meant. Politics is a rough, tough, unpredictable business – and troubles come in bunches. But you have to keep your nerve. And remember that when you come out of the teeth of the gale you’re tougher, more battle hardened and the weather is better.

Mr President, in this stormy period, some people seem to have forgotten something rather important. Just six months ago this very day this Conservative Party won the General Election. We did so against all the odds. Everyone said we didn’t have a chance. The opinion polls – and in those days people actually believed them! – they were against us. The pundits were against us. They said history was against us. They all got even more egg on their faces than I did. Because they left something out of their calculations. 14 and a half million British people were with us. We got more votes than ever before in any election in the whole of British history.

So why was it that those television exit polls were so wrong? Why didn’t the commentators see? Why didn’t the experts see? For that matter, why didn’t the BBC?

There were two reasons why we won that record level of support. First, it was the principles we all stood for – the principles we stand for still. And second, it was the people who worked for that victory. You. And thousands like you. Who did so much, gave so much, campaigned so hard together. Mr President, there is one lesson we should never forget. When the Conservative Party is united, it is an irresistible political force.

We Conservatives have great hopes and dreams for our country. But to make them reality we must win the battles we care about. Lift our country back into growth. And, in all we do, create the society we want for our children and the future.

But before I turn directly to the great decisions that face us, I’d like to say something about someone not with us today – Chris Patten. We planned the Election in the early days of January. We knew we would go into it behind in the polls – and we were confident we’d come out of it ahead. But we knew, too, that for Chris to run the Election and hold Bath would be desperately difficult.

So it proved. He’s a huge loss, not just to us, but to British politics. It was typical of him to decline a by-election, turn down a peerage, and take one of the toughest jobs in the world – as Governor of Hong Kong.

Chris, win for Hong Kong, just as you won for us. And when you come back, come and join us. In Government. Because you’ll still be welcome and we’ll still be there.

Someone else was a tower of strength through that Election. Norman Fowler. He was always at my side. Always there – with everything from beef burgers to wise advice.

But every time I went out with Norman, something very curious happened. People threw eggs at him. But they kept missing him and hitting me.

There are moments when great truths become evident. And this was one. A man who could duck so fast so often was clearly the right man for Central Office. Norman – it’s good to have you back.

But, above all, I must thank someone who is not a politician. Someone to whom my debt is too personal to express fully. She is here today – just as she was on every day of the Election Campaign. I mean of course, Norma.

Her role was even bigger than you may think. If I hadn’t met her on April 9th 1970, I might never have picked April 9th 1992. All those oceans of ink guessing the election date! Wasted! If only they’d asked Norma!

Mr President, in all our Conferences there is theatre. You expect to hear us expose our opponent’s policies. Expect none of that today. For Labour and the Liberal Democrats are utterly irrelevant. let us leave them on the sidelines – where they are and where they deserve to be. I intend to address myself to the country, the Conference and the Conservative Party.

Mr President, debates over our place in Europe have always touched raw nerves – in our Party and in our country. I don’t find that surprising. There are gut issues at stake. Opinions are passionately held. It is right to speak plainly and directly, even if for some it is uncomfortable. People must know exactly what’s at stake. The great dangers for our country and – as Douglas Hurd pointed out so graphically on Tuesday – for our Party if we make the wrong choices. And the right choices can only be based on facts. They can never be built on fears.

Of course, emotions run high. We saw that from both sides in the great Conference debate earlier this week.

For many of you, I know, the heart pulls in one direction and the head in another. There is nothing that can stir the heart like the history of this country. It is part of us. Nothing can change that. But it’s a different world now.

Our families are growing up in a different age. They know we can’t pull up the drawbridge and live in our own private yesterday. They know we live in a world of competition – and we can’t just wish it away. Change isn’t just coming, it’s here. I want Britain to mould that change, to lead that change in our own national interest.

That’s what I mean by being at the heart of Europe. Not turning a deaf ear to the heartbeat of Britain. But having the courage to stand up and do what we believe to be right.

Right for British industry, right for British jobs, right for British prosperity.

During the summer, when I was in Cornwall, a lady came up to speak to me. “Mr Major” she said, “please, please don’t let Britain’s identity be lost in Europe”. She didn’t tell me her name. But she spoke for the anxieties of millions. She spoke for this country. She spoke for me.

So let me tell this Conference what I told that lady in Cornwall. I will never – come hell or high water – let our distinctive British identity be lost in a federal Europe.

Let no-one in this Conference be in any doubt, this Government will not accept a centralised Europe.

And if there are those who have in mind to haul down the Union Jack and fly high the star-spangled banner of a United States of Europe, I say to them; you misjudge the temper of the British people. And you do not begin to understand the determination of this Prime Minister to put the interests of this country first, now and always.

Mr President, it’s true, the European Community has centralised too much. It has talked too much about European directives, and thought too little about Europe’s direction.

But at Maastricht we began to reverse that trend. And at Birmingham and Edinburgh we will carry that further.

So let me say to the European politicians; if you don’t heed that, you will never build the European Community you want. You will break up the European Community you have.

You cannot go forward by browbeating Denmark.

And to those who offer us gratuitous advice, I remind them of what a thousand years of history should tell them, you cannot bully Britain.

Mr President, I speak as one who believes Britain’s future lies with Europe. But, when I hear assertions from others in Europe, that we or the Danes should sign up on their terms. I’ll tell you what I think. I think they should keep their advice to themselves. Sign up on their terms? Before I was born, if this country hadn’t fought on our terms there’d be no free Europe to sign up to.

All these are frustrations. They cause great anger. But emotion must not govern policy. At the heart of our policy lies one objective and one only – a cold, clear-eyed calculation of the British national interest. What is right for Britain. What is right for our future. And from that calculation I will not be budged.

Let me come directly to the issue that has caused such controversy. The Treaty of Maastricht seems to have become enshrouded in myth and legend. Certainly, the Treaty I hear about is not the one I negotiated.

What are the fears people have about Maastricht? We heard many of them in our debate this week.

A Single Currency! Under the Maastricht Treaty, Britain is not committed to a single currency.

Immigration? Immigration policy is specifically excluded under the Maastricht Treaty.

Jobs and working conditions? I refused to sign up for the Social Chapter.

Education? The Treaty explicitly rules out any Community interference in what is taught in schools or the way education is run.

Defence? Defence is kept out of the control of the Community.

Citizenship? We are British citizens and we will always remain British citizens.

Conference, if I believed what some people said about the Treaty, I would vote against it. But I don’t. So I’m going to put the real Treaty, the one I negotiated, back to the House of Commons.

There is one great prize in the Treaty. For the first time we have reached agreement on developing the community in voluntary cooperation between independent nation states. That means outside the Treaty of Rome, outside the jurisdiction of the European Court, outside the competence of the European Commission. We have wanted this principle established for years. And we now have it in the Treaty I signed.

It is time the distortions were put to one side. It is time to return the debate to reality and away from myth.

In the Treaty, there was give and take – there has to be in any partnership. But in the end we got what we wanted. Not the agreement our partners signed up to: a better agreement. We obtained for Britain the flexibility and freedom which others signed away.

When I hear some of the criticisms of the Treaty I think of Don Quixote – you may remember him. He read too many old books and got carried away, fighting imaginary battles. He tilted at windmills in the belief they were giants. He saw things that weren’t there. There has been a lot of that in the current debate on Maastricht.

Yes, we made concession. But so did our partners. What would they now think of a British Prime Minister who fights a tough negotiation, gives firm undertakings, and then comes back and breaks his word? What would we think of someone who did that to us?

Who would ever trust Britain again? We would have broken faith. A demeaning position in which no British Government should ever be placed.

But, far more than that, what is at stake is something practical and hard-headed.

We wouldn’t just be breaking our word. We would be breaking Britain’s future influence in Europe. We would be ending our hopes of ever building the kind of Europe that we want.

And we would be doing that, just when across Europe the argument is coming our way. We would be leaving European policy to the French and the Germans. That is not a policy for Great Britain. It would be an historic mistake. And not one your Government will make.

Let us not forget why we joined the Community. It has given us jobs. New markets. New horizons. Nearly 60% of our trade is now with our partners. It is the single most important factor in attracting a tide of Japanese and American investment to our shores. It is absolutely vital for businesses, big and small – and for our prospects of economic growth.

There isn’t a single business leader who believes Britain’s interests lie outside. And I hope they will make their views clear – and public.

But the most far-reaching, the most profound reason for working together in Europe I leave till last. It is peace. The peace and stability of a continent, ravaged by total war twice in this century. Today images of violence and exile are being acted out on the shores of the Adriatic. Where only two years ago the children of a million tourists laughed and played, young men of Europe are locked in a bloody civil war.

That’s why I want Britain to work in the ’90s for a wider and wiser Community, embracing the new democracies of the East. That is the vision we have for the next generation. And it’s vital for our own security. But it is a vision we will only make real if we’re in there arguing for it, not scowling in the wings.

Mr President, I’m not starry-eyed about Europe. If I’m starry-eyed, it’s about this country. Britain has always grown and prospered when it has looked outwards – from the time of the First Elizabeth, right through to the Second. Let us then not turn away and put up the shutters – but do what we believe – with faith, and courage and conviction. In the name of the present, and in the name of the future, we cannot sit this one out.

Some take the view that we must choose between Europe and our friendship with the United States. What total nonsense. Britain is the indissoluble link between the United States and the continent of Europe. We have growing ties of commerce and trade with Europe, but we have blood ties over many generations with our friends in America.

We in this party will preserve and strengthen our special relationship with America. It is longstanding. Tested in many battles. Reinforced by ties of kinship, language and shared values. Britain and America have stood side by side many times in many theatres of war against tyranny and oppression. On that line we must always take our stand and will, together.

Eight weeks ago, we decided to send some 2,000 troops to Yugoslavia under the flag of the United Nations. They will bring aid to the victims of that terrible civil war. Without this common effect, we would be seeing in a few months time hundreds of thousands of people – men, women and children in Bosnia – in Europe – dying of starvation, of cold and lack of medicine.

Britain is already the largest supplier of medicines. And, amidst all the dangers, our RAF Hercules have played a leading part in the airlift into Sarajevo. Those young men know the risks; but they have met them, just as the young men who will keep open the land corridors know the risks and will meet them. We can be proud of them – and we are.

The safety of these troops will always be first in our minds. They are there for humanitarian reasons. They are not there to hold the combatants apart – and they will not be asked to do so. They are there to fight only in self-defence and then they have authority to use all the force they need.

We are asking a lot of them. But they know what we know – and what our soldiers in Northern Ireland who stand in the front-line against terrorism also know. There is a duty to be done. I believe it is a duty that this Conference, gathered here in Brighton, would not want Britain, of all nations, to shirk. In these difficult and dangerous tasks they deserve, and will get, this Party’s full support.

Mr President, I have spoken of our plans for Europe, and our beliefs about Britain’s place in the world. We now have to lead Britain through difficult times at home, as we have done so often in our history.

You know the things I care about – we all care about – the things I dreamt about as a boy. The chance to get on in life. To acquire knowledge, security, the prospect of a better future – and a life fulfilled. A corner of life that you can call your own. That’s what people struggle for and sacrifice for when they watch their children grow.

If we’re going to meet those hopes, fulfil those dreams – then we must build a strong economy.

And looking around the world, we can see even more clearly what makes an economy strong. A Government that secures two things; low inflation and the right climate for business to succeed.

It is people who create wealth.

People, not Government. Business, not bureaucracy. Enterprise, not interference.

But business can’t succeed if Government doesn’t play its part.

Low taxes – low inflation. Leaving people more of their own money to spend and save. Protecting them from those robber barons of the twentieth century. Inflation and the state.

I believe – I know – that it was for those tasks that the British people elected us to govern again.

They didn’t trust anyone else to control inflation. They didn’t trust anyone else with their taxes. They didn’t trust anyone else to keep the state of industry’s back.

Mr President, we must – and we will – deliver upon that trust.

But today even the world’s most successful economies face difficulties. In the United States. In Japan. Throughout Europe – yes, and in Germany, too.

And here in Britain I know how great is the personal hardship that many people are facing. Some have lost their jobs; some their businesses; some their homes. We must pursue policies that will bring hope back into their lives.

I know how hard people are hit by the misfortune that befalls home after home, family after family, in a recession. Unemployment is a bitter experience. I don’t want a temporary cure. I want a lasting recovery. To come out of this recession safe from the threat of its repetition. If there is one thought that goes through my mind wherever I see this recession Mr President, never again! That’s why we’re looking for long-term solutions. That’s why we’ll take no risks with inflation. And that’s why we will continue to do everything possible to create the prosperity that is the hallmark of a Conservative Government.

But we must not forget what has been achieved and is essential for lasting recovery.

Inflation – down from nearly 11% to just over 3.5% in the past two years. And today I can tell you that even the underlying rate – that hard core we have found so difficult to reduce – has come down to 4%.

Interest rates – down from 15% to 9%. The starting rate of income tax – down from 25% to 20%. Mortgage payments down, on average, 80 pounds a month. All putting more of people’s own money back in their own pockets.

And, yet, despite that progress, it’s been taking such a long time for things to get going. I know hos frustrating that is. Here as abroad, debt has made people cautious. Slow to spend. That’s made things tough for small businesses. Tough for industry, too.

That’s what makes British industry’s successes all the more remarkable. Exports – close to record levels. Manufacturing output rising – and productivity at record levels. Investment began to rise in the spring. And even in the High Street, sales have been picking up again.

It is not enough. It is only a beginning. But now, I believe, we can aim for more.

With a low inflation rate, we can compete with the best in Europe.

Let’s not forget how we managed to bring inflation down and the man who did it – Norman Lamont. As he reminded us yesterday, for nearly two years it was the discipline of the ERM that helped us do so. But last month, we faced turmoil in the markets and rising interest rates across Europe. Germany’s troubles had driven European interest rates so high that the mechanism was no longer the servant of Europe’s prosperity.

But let us not waste time looking back. We have to deal with the world as it is. Let’s take advantage of our circumstances to win new success for Britain.

With a lower exchange rate, we have a new competitive edge in Europe. And provided we don’t blunt it with inflation, it gives us a real opportunity, in a single European market of 330 million people.

A market for British computers. British cars. British televisions. British textiles. British services. British skills. The biggest free trade area in the world.

That’s the market in which British enterprise must succeed. And the Government will back British business all the way.

Let us return to that old and vivid slogan: British means business. And let me say a little more about what I believe Government can do to make it true.

First, low inflation. Down to the point where it no longer interferes with the decisions people and businesses have to make in their daily lives.

Second, we must create an economic environment in which more people are willing to invest their effort, their savings, their skills in new businesses because of the rewards that exist.

Those who risk their savings should know that if they build up wealth by their efforts, they will be able to keep more of it. What families have worked a lifetime to create, the taxman should never be allowed to destroy.

Those who build up new businesses must be confident they won’t be stifled by taxation. And we know what that means for Government – it means standing firm against all those pleas for extra public spending. All so attractive to someone – so disastrous in combination.

Where more is really needed we will spend more. Our plans allow for that. But more for some programmes may have to mean less – for others. Because we have set our limits – and we will stick to them.

Mr. President, it’s going to be a tough spending round. All my colleagues know it. But they also know they’ve got to do what business does. Protect the quality – cut the cost. We can keep improving our public services – if the public sector doesn’t pay itself what the taxpayer can’t afford.

It’s too easy – when spending is under pressure – to forget the long term. To let the burden fall on private industry alone.

We must work with industry, to see whether the public and private sectors working together can do more to invest in our future. More to improve the infrastructure of this country. I know the problems. But it is time to look afresh at whether we can find new solutions.

But that’s not enough. We must also see what more we can do to help our exporters win for Britain. In the single market – and in the world trading system.

We are battling for free trade – and to make sure we take the best advantage of it. I want to see British enterprise succeeding across the globe. Winning contracts. Creating British jobs. Generating our future prosperity.

And as part of this we must do more to lighten the burden of government regulation. Government should stand behind business – not in its way.

Mr President, this is a battle we’ve been fighting since 1979. But it’s a battle that is never won. And now is the time to mount a new offensive.

We’re already on the march against the Eurocrat and his sheaf of directives. But you know, it isn’t just Brussels that rolls out the red tape.

It’s Whitehall. And town hall. Everyone likes to tie another knot. Admirable intentions – disastrous combinations. Piling costs on industry. Mr President, that must stop.

It’s not just big business that suffers. Far too often, it is the small firms who really suffer. Small firms – fed up with filling in the forms – who feel that it is just not worth being in business at all.

Of course, we want to have confidence in the safety of the food we eat, the homes we buy, the place we work in, the people who take charge of our children. But when this reaches the point where you may need 28 separate licences, certificates and registrations just to start a business, then I say again, this sort of thing must stop.

I have asked Michael Heseltine to take responsibility for cutting through this burgeoning maze of regulations. Who better for hacking back the jungle? Come on, Michael. Out with your club. On with your loin cloth. Swing into them!

You know, deregulation isn’t just about making life better for business. It’s about making life easier for everybody. Take the bureaucratic controls which mean Whitehall decides whether you have the chance to stop off the motorway. Every parent knows what I mean. Next services, 54 miles – when your children can’t make 10!

They’ve got to go. And so those rules have got to go!

Or take the system that keeps air fares far too high. It’s absurd that international air travel is regulated under rules set out before the jet airliner was even invented.

And why should so many people, from all over Britain, have to come to London when they want to fly abroad? I want to see more flights directly out of Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham and all our regional airports. That’s better for the people who live there – and better for London too.

Mr President, it is vital that we get the economy back into strong – and sustainable – growth. We can do it. We must do it. But that is only the first of our ambitions for the course of this Parliament. The manifesto that won the Election set out a full programme for five years. Now we’re going to put it into action.

Ladies and gentlemen, the year 2000 is less than a hundred months away. That, at any rate, is the latest Treasury forecast. I want Britain’s example, its ingenuity, its decency and principle to be in the forefront as we cross that threshold.

In all we do we must speak to the instincts of the British people. For 300 years, the Conservative Party has reflected those instincts in a way that no other political party has ever been able to match.

So let’s go out and tell the people about the things we’ll be working for, and fighting for, in the next four years of Conservative Government.

We’ll be fighting for better public service.

For services that put the parents, the patients, and the passengers first. Fighting bloody-minded and petty bureaucracy wherever we find it. That’s what the Citizen’s Charter is about.

We’ll be fighting for good local Government, closer to local people. That’s why in Wales it’s set to be goodbye to the likes of Clwyd and Gwent and back to Pembrokeshire and Anglesey. In Scotland, the Scottish Secretary will be consulting the public on change – but I rather suspect it could be an Ian Lang farewell to monstrosities like Strathclyde.

In England we will give everyone the chance to put their views on the future of councils like Cleveland or Avon. I can’t predict the outcome. But can you imagine Len Hutton walking out to bat for Humberside?

We’ll be fighting for better health and social services.

For a Health Service run by local people in patients’ interests. For more GP fundholders and more of our successful hospital trusts. We want better care for the elderly and vulnerable in the home and the community – wherever they choose to be. And we must make sure local councils respect the wishes of those who do go into homes. People in their last years are entitled to as much choice and dignity as anyone else. Not less choice and no dignity.

And Mr President, we have all been deeply shocked at the reports of scandals in some social security departments. It’s terrible when children are involved. That’s why we are going to set up regular independent inspection of social work in every council. We will not let vulnerable people and children be put at risk.

We’ll be fighting to strengthen the rights of ordinary trade union members.

They must have freedom to join the union of their choice – and fairness in union ballots and finances.

And, under the Citizen’s Charter, we’re going to give you – all of you – a new right. To take direct action in the courts against those who disrupt public services through unlawful strikes, and hold the country to ransom.

And we’ve already blown the whistle on one of the last bastions of the closed shop – student unions. The days in which they march and demonstrate at the taxpayer’s expense and numbered.

When it comes to education, my critics say I’m old-fashioned. Old-fashioned? Reading and writing? Spelling and sums? Great literature – and standard English grammar? Old fashioned?

Well, if I’m old-fashioned, well, so be it. So are the vast majority of Britain’s parents. And I have this message for the progressives who are trying to change the exams. English exams should be about literature, not soap opera. And I promise you this. There’ll be no GCSEs in Eldorado – even assuming anyone is still watching it!

I also want reform of teacher training. Let us return to basic subject teaching, not courses in the theory of education. Primary teachers should learn how to teach children to read, not waste their time on the politics of gender, race and class,

I don’t know if you feel as I do, but I think it is intolerable that children should spend years in school and then leave them unable to read or add up. It’s a terrible waste of young lives.

We want high standards, sound learning, diversity and choice in all our schools. But, in some – particularly in those inner cities – Isaac Newton would not have learned to count and Anthony Trollope would never have learned to write.

We cannot abandon the children in schools like these. And we will not. So if local authorities cannot do the job, then we will give the job to others.

In the place of the local authority which has failed, new Education Associations will be set up to run and revive these schools. Governments have always shied away from it. But I am not prepared to any longer.

Yes, it will mean another colossal row with the educational establishment. I look forward to that. It’s a row worth having. A row where we will have the vast majority of parents – and the vast majority of good, committed teachers – squarely on our side. They believe what we believe – that children must come first.

Mr President, there was a time when Britain was a watchword for good behaviour across the world. I want to restore that good name. People are horrified when they see mindless vandalism; old people attacked by young thugs; drunken louts on the rampage, blackening Britain’s reputation abroad. Not only horrified, they’re ashamed.

Mr President, to excuse crime may seem understanding. But it’s wrong. Sympathy doesn’t curb crime. If society wants to protect itself it must condemn crime, not condone it. We must create a climate in which people know the difference between right and wrong and yours and mine. We must spell out the truth. Crime wrecks lives, spreads fear, corrupts society. It is the fault of the individual, and no one else.

We are cracking down hard on crime – particularly violence. And that includes – as I promised last year – tough sentences for those who cause death by dangerous driving or drunken driving. Nothing can excuse those who kill in this way. We are taking action. And I hope the courts will respond.

There’s another problem we are dealing with – the illegal occupation of land by so called “new-age travellers”.

You will have seen the pictures on television or in the newspapers; if you live in the West Country and Wales you may have seen it on your doorstep. Farmers powerless. Crops ruined and livestock killed by people who say they commune with nature, but have no respect for it when it belongs to others.

New age travellers? Not in this age. Not in any age.

They say that we don’t understand them. Well, I’m sorry – but if rejecting materialism means destroying the property of others; then I don’t understand. If doing your own things means exploiting the social security system and sponging off others, then I don’t want to understand. If alternative values mean a selfish and lawless disregard for others, then I won’t understand. Let others speak for these new age travellers. We will speak for their victims.

Mr President, the things I care most about are the long term things – stability and security at home and in Europe; rebuilding standards in education; the long-term strength – economic and moral – of our nation. Preserving Britain’s pride and purpose and belief in itself. That’s what I care about. That’s what I stand for.

Isn’t that what we’re all about together in this Party? That’s what our forebears worked for when they built it, when they sent its roots down deep – right into the very heart and marrow of Britain. That’s why we are all in this Party together – you and I.

That’s why I fought so hard in the Election to keep our country one. For me that is the highest and greatest of our causes – to defend the unity of the United Kingdom, and all that binds our nation together. For unless we stay united, unless we stand together, as a Party and as a nation, this country will never prevail. There is not a man or a woman in this hall, or listening outside, who doesn’t know in their heart that is true.

So let’s be confident at home and in Europe. Let’s not turn away and say “It’s all too difficult”. Let’s not hang back because we don’t believe our voice will be heard. Right across Europe, now, in this critical hour, people are looking and listening to us and to what we have to say.

It won’t always be easy. It won’t always be comfortable. But in all we do, there is one thing I will never forget. This is our country.

What we do, we do for Britain. What we do, we do for the future of our children and for generation yet unborn. For their prosperity and their security, and never for short term political advantage.

Let us have faith, and courage, and pride. Britain’s interests will come first – for me, and this Party. First. Last. Always.